Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Great Beast
by unknown user
Summary: Nonlinear AU focusing on an alternate version of Eva's combination of science and mysticism, primarily reframing in the context of thelema. Four thousand or so years of backstory. Currently on part three of four. Expect research to be necessary to enjoy.
1. Part I Chapter 1

"_I am become death: The destroyer of worlds_"  
-- J Robert Oppenheimer

**THE GREAT BEAST **  
CHAPTER 01: **Babalon **

In the days before second impact, it seemed as though humanity knew no limits. With economies booming and technologies that were barely believable just a few years before becoming entirely commonplace, mankind seemed unstoppable and progress seemed eternal, the grinding of the gears of a new information industry. While in another time, an economic bubble might have burst and set the world's expectations back to reality, instead there was a catastrophe. There was no warning. The days of expecting y2k had gone, and the survivalists laughed out of town. Those expecting an apocalypse on midnight of January first would be disappointed to know they had a few months more to wait. Those expecting to be saved by some entity of dubious corporeality would be doubly disappointed.

Water, once so precious at the dawning of man as to merit worship, was now man's enemy. The meteor excuse was obviously false -- so obviously false that for once, the conspiracy theorists' rantings that the governments were lampshading to hide the truth was heard with more agreement than mockery. They couldn't be more wrong. Even the governments had no idea what had happened.

Nine months later, to the day, there was a birth. There were many births, actually, but not as many as usual for a given day. The birth rate had suffered strangely from the catastrophe -- even those who survived were less likely to be fertile, and not for lack of trying. Given the unknown nature of the disaster, who knew what might be the cause? Perhaps there were environmental factors involved. Perhaps the governments were trying to sap and impurify the precious fluids of their citizens. Perhaps that thing in antarctica was some kind of new nuke. Terrorist attacks were out of the question: no single group had that kind of firepower, not even a single government, and besides -- who would attack antarctica?

The child was sent away to live with relatives. He grew up knowing little about his father except that he was living with his father's sister-in-law and her husband, and that his father was doing something very important to national security. There were rumours about his father's early years, of course, but nothing very logical. Something about his interest in explosives and his strange choice of reading material. There were rumours about his mastery of odd languages, and the strange sounds he mumbled under his breath as a child. A prodigy, at the time, but certainly an odd one. Young Shinji paid little attention, turning to his studies to escape the coldness of his household. It wasn't as though his new gaurdians were unkind, but they were reserved. He was not proper family. He was not their son, and would not be treated as such. In these strained times, he was simply a long-term guest, a child in a museum.

He spent as much time away from home as possible.

The local library was rather well known, in the area. A great selection, for a public library, made even greater by the fact that it took over lots of the books from surrounding libraries about to be demolished or undergoing long-term repairs, which in the strain of what some people were calling post-apocalyptic times, were long-delayed and long-extended for other projects that were considered to be of greater importance.

The library had a barcode system for checkout, which though not precisely state of the art, was somewhat expensive for a public institution with relatively little funding. The barcode stickers doubled as RFID tags, and the checkout process in of itself disabled the RFID signal to alert for stolen books.

Shinji had begun spending his time reading as an escape, but now he enjoyed it in of itself. It didn't really matter where he was. He could check out books and read them at home. As long as he had a book, he was never alone. A book is a friend that never changes.

Meanwhile, the whispers began again. 'Look at him,' they would say. 'Just like his father. Soon he'll get into something awful in those books.'

He devoured much of the stacks, starting with the children's books and progressing to the adult books, reading things that he really couldn't understand much of the time because he knew that he could always remember the information and recall it back once he could put it in context. He read much of the fiction, especially the science fiction, though he stayed away from the fantasy. The time had passed for escapism. He went into some of the nonfiction, making a bit of a spectacle. A young boy, perhaps seven or eight and barely able to peer over the checkout desk, checking out a pile of thick books on odd subjects. They would ask him if he really understood all that, and he'd always respond the same. "If I don't, I will someday. I'll read it so that when I can understand, I'll know it already"

One day, checking out a bunch of arbitrarily chosen books, he managed to pick up one without a barcode. "This one," the librarian said. "We don't really have the equipment to add another tag into the system right now. Take this home. When you bring it back, remind me and I'll check if we can add it in." The book was old, not just pre-impact but fifty or sixty years older. He had picked it out because it reminded him of how small and young he was, that he could read things that were eight times as old as he was. The book was labeled in roman characters, and despite the cursory level of english he had managed to figure out on his own, the title didn't make any sense. "Liber A.L." it said.  
The book sat on his shelf, all but forgotten, for some time. Much of the time he conciously ignored it, thinking that he could return it at any time while all these other books have due dates. His english had advanced a bit due to reading some english primers and textbooks and a few short novels that were donated by some pre-impact cultural outreach program. His reading became automatic, for both roman characters and kana, and in his reading he managed to pick up quite a few new kanji from context despite not knowing how to pronounce many due to his skipping around in terms of subject matter. Everything seemed to him to be language, sequences of symbols giving meaning. Was there anything that wasn't language? What could exist that was not a string of symbols communicating intent from one thing to another? Even physics in his mind took the form of objects talking to one another through the language of motion.

One rainy day, he was stuck inside. Thunder growled and rumbled, and lightning flashed. It was a summer storm, like all storms since impact. The lightning had looked purple when it began, a sunshower at sunset. Now it was a moonshower, lightning stealing the brightness of the moon for moments, thunder roaring like a caged beast. He was out of books. He needed some support, and some distraction. Seeing the lone book on the shelf, old and musty, he saw it with new eyes. It was an artifact from an age long-gone-by. It was not only much older than he, but much older than his adopted parents. It was older than the wrinkly woman who checked out his books for him. He attacked it with tentative enthusiasm, hoping it would take the edge off of his irrational fear.

It began somewhat quaintly, and the text was obviously far older than the edition. It had the oblique denseness that obscured many english texts from the century prior to impact. It was full of archaic politeness and sounded a bit like something H. P. Lovecraft would write -- a bit of cosmic horror wrapped in the form of stuffy academic work. But soon, it was roaring and thundering along with the storm outside. It was not the neitzschean tone of self-determination and inner strength that drew him -- he barely could pronounce the name, himself, despite the fact that in the years after impact that kind of philosophy had been expounded to the point of being as dry and worn and humourless as a bad cliche. It was not really even the meaning that kept him going, as being only ten years old and a non-native speaker to boot, he had very little idea of what any of it was supposed to mean literally, let alone figuratively. It was not the tabu thrill of the sacreligious tone that drove him to a fervor and made his heart pound -- he had no religious upbringing, and the only experience he had with the concept of christianity was that it was always made fun of in science fiction novels. It was simply the way that the words sounded, and his voice raised from the subvocal level to an eerie whispering as he finished the final chapter, the stormfronts clearing slowly to allow the sun to counter the rumbling challenge of dying thunder in the distance.

The works of Aliester Crowley -- famous occultist, playboy, mountain climber, heretic, and public madman -- were considered to be mind-warping even to the most developed and advanced adult. Legendary genius Jack Parsons, who started the Jet Propulsion Lab and brought humanity into the age of space travel, was tempted into the fray and pushed much of his money into Crowley's cult, meanwhile chanting passages from the Liber A.L. while doing his experimental work on new rocket fuels. The mind behind the manhattan project was said to have taken part in some of the eldritch ceremonies. It was claimed that Crowley's mixture of science and magic was a threat to the integrity of both. It was never even considered that his works might be read by a little boy.

For the second time, it happened.


	2. Part I Chapter 2

"_The Law is love: love under will_."  
- Aliester Crowley

**THE GREAT BEAST **  
CHAPTER 02: **Aiwass speaks **

"I wonder if I should go to the shelter after all..." The street was abandoned, ironically calm warnings the only sound echoing through the empty city. He tried the telephone again. Same message.

"She's late." He tapped his foot. "I wonder what kind of person she is. Working for my father means she's military. Aren't they supposed to be on time for everything? Perhaps she's a civillian researcher or something." He reached into his jacket, rubbing the worn cover of the only luxury he allowed himself to bring along. He knew that chances were the good luck effect it gave was an illusion, but he figured that if he tested it properly he could come out with a good idea of how much luck it actually did bring. He heard a loud sound above. The footsteps of a giant.

A car swerved into place beside him. "Get in."

"Aah, Misato-san! Okay." He got in, buckling up quickly as the car started accelerating. He saw the masked face of a giant through the side mirror. He absently drew a pentagram on his leg, mumbling.

Misato looked at him. 'What a strange boy.'

A noise came through on the car stereo. It seemed to be a citizen's band reciever. "The angel has become stationary. We're taking this opportunity to try the N2."

Misato halted to a stop, hugging the curb on the driver's side. "Shinji-kun, get down!" She covered him with her body as a mushroom cloud appeared on the horizon.

--

"Yes, we've got it."

"Looks like you won't get a try, Ikari. Shame."

"The sensors are out, so we won't know until the backup systems start up." Gendou hated to play the simpering fool, but it was worth it to see the look on their faces when he was proven correct.

"Are you kidding? There's no way anything could have withstood that kind of blast."

"Sensors are starting up. High energy reading from ground zero! Pattern blue! He's still there."

"Damnit! It's a monster, that's what it is. A demon!"

"Have your fun, Ikari. Just hope that you can kill this thing. We all know what will happen if you fail."

Gendou allowed himself a smile. "Of course. This is our reason for existence." He turned to the bridge bunny. "How long do we have?"

"The MAGI indicate that the target is exected to heal to functional levels in two hours, at which point the attack will proceed. They have no explanation for its previous stalling."

Gendou smiled to himself. 'The boy may not be quite so useless after all.'

--

"Misato-san, we've been past this point three times already."

"Aa- sorry, Shinji-kun. I'm not quite used to this layout yet. Place is like a maze."

Just then, a tremor went through the geofront. "Go left," Shinji said. "Hurry."

Misato, realizing that she probably didn't have any better idea of how to get through herself, decided to follow the boy's instructions, finally ending up at the bridge.

"Misato, you're late."

"Hi, Ritsuko. How's the cat?"

"Dead, if we waste any more time. Is this him?" She gestured at Shinji.

"Aa- Shinji Ikari, pleased to make your aquaintance. Please treat me kindly." Shinji bowed formally.

"Pleased to meet you, Shinji-kun. I'm Doctor Ritsuko Akagi." She glanced at Misato, who made a noncommital motion. "Do you know why you're here?"

Shinji looked around at the equipment. "Does my father need me for... a research project?" He hadn't actually questioned why he was being sent for, but now that he was there, he couldn't think of a good reason.

"I suppose you could say that. This is more of a practical application project, though." 'Smart boy,' the bottle-blonde thought to herself. 'Maybe he's smart enough not to fall into all this. That man doesn't need any more pawns.'

"Oh!" Shinji's excitement showed on his face. "Technology, then!" It made sense. He wasn't really equipped for research, being only fourteen. But, for any kind of commodity item, he would make a good focus tester. He believed himself to be quite normal. It was only natural that family ties could be used as lines of communication for testing, since the assumed loyalty could ensure secrecy better among the young than nondisclosure agreements.  
But what of the demon outside? All the commotion and action and excitement?

"Step into this room please." He followed the two into a dark room. The lights came on suddenly.

Looking at the shape, images went through his head, his body caught in the midst of activation syndrome. His palms sweat, and the colours all seemed to glare. No words. No words. Then.

"_To mega therion_," he whispered. "_The great beast_."

"This is the pinnacle of mankind's achievement, the ARTIFICIAL HUMAN EVANGELION. Created in secret, it is man's last hope"

"The demon outside." He thought out loud. "You want me to defeat it"

"Precisely." A window lit up above.

"Father," he greeted. "Why me"

"You are the only one who can"

"Bullshit." He felt anger rise in him. "There is some other reason. You wouldn't spend years in secret to build a weapon that only your son could use. It would be impractical."

"Nevertheless, that is the case. Will you pilot?"

Shinji thought about it. "What happens if I don't."

Gendou smiled. "Then the entire population of the earth is killed."

"Why should I believe you?"

Gendou frowned. He had planned on being able to do this on the level of power plays alone. Most people will accept a threat in place of an explanation.

"I'm waiting."

After a short staring match, Gendou turned to the monitor beside him. "Fuyutsuki. The spare is unusable. Rei will pilot again."

'So it isn't only me after all...' Shinji thought to himself. 'But, what a strange bluff if he had someone there already.'

Two men brought in a gurney. Upon it, almost unnoticable due to the similarity in colouring, was a pale girl with pale hair. She sat up, wincing. 'Babalon...' Shinji gasped. 'So, this is how he turns the tables.'

Just then, there was another quake. The gurney tumbled, and Shinji made a dive to catch the girl. There was blood.

"Father. If this is how you want to play the game, then I concede this round. I will pilot. But don't expect this to work again."

--

Standing upon the surface, the Eva's final lock bolts were released. "Shinji, first just try to get it to walk."

"How?"

"Just will it to walk."

Shinji thought about this. 'The law is love: love under will. Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.' He smiled. The great beast began to walk.


	3. Part I Chapter 3

"_Now then shall He end His Speech with Silence? For He is Speech._"  
- Aleister Crowley, _Liber B vel Magi sub Figura I _

** THE GREAT BEAST **  
CHAPTER 03: **Unweaving a Story I **

The great goddess Innana, daughter of Sin, hid away in the corner of a dank hut on the bank of the Euphrates, sobbing to herself. She was alone.

A figure appeared in the door, large and imposing, yet friendly. "Young Innana, what have I done to disparage you? How may I compensate you?"

Innana looked up. "You have given my brothers and sisters their roles. My sister, the great goddess Ninlil, has the domain of all of airspace. My brother, the great god Ninkashi, has the domain of beer and drinks for the thirsty. Where is my role, Brother Enki? I am the honoured Innana, and what is my function? My sister, Ninti, is given the domain of healing. Where is my role, Father Enki? I am the honoured goddess Innana, and what would be my function?"

"Young Innana, what have I done to disparage you? Young Innin, how may I compensate you? Daughter Innana, you are the air not the wind. You are the movement in the leaves. How can I compensate you? You make prophecy, though you are not a seer. How could I disparage you? You make good omen, though you are not a sign. You make evil omen, though you are not a bird of ill fortune. How have I disparaged you? How may I compensate you? Sister Innana, you make the fields grow that are forever dead, and you kill that which cannot be defeated. Young Innana, you make love in the presence of war, and tear away the fated ones. How could I disparage you? How may I compensate you? You create the uncreatable, you destroy the undestroyable. You make the pronouncements that cannot be made. You tangle and untangle the threads. The Lapis Lazuli crown is your perogative."

With that, the great goddess Innana had discovered her role.

--

"Ikari. An angel is coming. I will go ahead." She turned, trotting off to the geofront outlet.

Shinji sighed, closed his notebook, and started after her. "Your reactivation test is today?"

"Yes." She slowed slightly.

"Are you frightened?"

She frowned. "No."

"Why not?"

"I have faith in the commander." Her tone betrayed no emotion.

"Things went wrong earlier. There is no reason to believe that he has fixed everything."

She stopped and turned to him. "He is your father, is he not?"

Shinji nodded.

"Yet you don't have faith in him."

"He hasn't proven himself to be worthy of my faith." Her eyes opened slightly wider, and then narrowed.

Shinji grabbed her hand mid-slap. "I wish you luck on your activation test," he said simply. He let her hand go, and watched it fall limply to her side. He walked ahead of her.

--

"This?" The museum was hot and stuffy, the stale cairo air outside barely better. The man ignored the sweat on his vaguely rotund brow, and pulled the belt slightly tighter around the developing paunch beneath his robe. The stele he stood in front of showed a winged sundisk illuminating a seated figure and a standing figure, surrounded with heiroglyphs. The piece had the museum identification number 666.

The woman, with a voice that echoed and viabrated oddly in the air, said "Yes."

The man checked off a box in his leatherbound notebook, and said "What sign do you identify with?" He continued going down the list.

--

"That thing we dug up, it's... Well, you should probably see for yourself. Hurry." The assistant beckoned the doctor over to the other building, grabbing his greatcoat off the hook and throwing it at him.

Just as they passed through the door, they stopped. "What the hell?"

The being spread its wings and wailed.

--

"The pulse is feeding back! Signals are approaching max frequency!"

"Cut the A10 connection!"

"It's not responding. The Eva has gone into autonomous mode."

"Use manual override to break outgoing nerve signals! Initiate A10 autistic mode!"

"Plug autoeject initiated!"

All eyes went to the window. "Rei!"

"Extend wire web and bakelite jets!"

The commander ran to the door, taking the bare steel staircase down halfway before jumping off onto the floor of the test booth. He ran to the falling plug, and grasped the burning handles.

The seal broke with an audible zip. "Rei! Are you alright?!"

The girl looked up. "Yes." She looked at the strangely shaped pendant warping in the warm LCL. It was a hand with a blue eye in the center, a serpent coiled around the thumb.

"I see," he said.


	4. Part I Chapter 4

"_Yet the Magus hath power upon the Mother both directly and through love_."  
- Aleister Crowley, _Liber B vel Magi sub Figura I_

**THE GREAT BEAST **  
Chapter 04: **The Martian Time-slip**

"Class seems empty these days..." It wasn't that Hikari missed having people to boss around. It wouldn't really matter what she did with them, or to them. She just felt better when there were more people around.

"Can't be helped. Lots of people leave at the first sign of real action." He turned his camera to face Hikari's seat.

"You're the only one greatful for a war, Kensuke" Touji said, entering the room.

"It's not that I'm happy about it, but this city was built for this kind of thing. Regardless of how silly NERV's proclamations sounded at the time, it's still a bad idea to ignore them entirely. Don't move to a city built for war if you can't stand fighting, even if you don't think the war will really happen."

Touji took his usual seat.

"Hey," Kensuke whispered. "Check out the transfer student. You think he might have been the pilot of that mech?"

"You know I can hear you, right?" Seeing the shock on their faces, even temporarily, was worth it.

Just then, the teacher entered.

-

"Sorry I didn't get a chance to ask you directly before... Are you?" He pointed the camera.

"Am I the pilot of that mech? I guess you could say that. It's a little more complicated than that, though."

Touji furrowed his brow.

Kensuke zoomed in. "What do you mean?"

"It's not just me. It's mostly automatic, I think. It's supposed to be thought-controlled. I don't really remember."

Touji stood up suddenly. "Outside. Now."

Shinji followed him out.

"Listen, punk. I've had enough of this. You can brag all you like, but don't do it in front of me. You were all over the city in that thing, causing all sorts of damage."

"But the news said no one was injured!"

"Bullshit. Did you see the damage it caused? Buildings were totally knocked down."

Shinji was taken slightly aback. "I-it's pretty big, you know. It's hard to avoid doing some damage, fighting in the city."

Touji glared at him. "You knocked down my dad's building. The entire building. My sister was in there. You're lucky she ain't dead, 'cause if she was, I'd kill ya and shove yer decapitated limbs up yer ass."

"S-she wasn't hurt, was she?"

"She wasn't, luckily. But that building held offices for lots of companies. A lot of 'em were small, like my dad's. Most of those companies could barely afford the office space, let alone insurance. Even if you didn't kill anybody during the attack, they're gonna end up starvin' to death 'cause they ain't got their livelihood." He fumed. "It sucks, thinking about that. Some people might be able to move away, but my dad's staying here, 'cause he says he has too much invested in the appartment now. So we're stuck here, while you destroy the rest of the city!"

"I'm sorry."

"You're sorry?! Is that all you have to say?!" He grabbed Shinji by the collar. "You'd better do better than apologize. You might be safe up in your mech, but down here you're just as human as the rest of us, and I have half a mind to pound ya!"

Just then, sirens rang out through the city.

--

"EXISTENCE, as we know it, is full of sorrow. To mention only one minor point: every man is a condemned criminal, only he does not know the date of his execution. This is unpleasant for every man. Consequently every man does everything possible to postpone the date, and would sacrifice anything that he has if he could reverse the sentence." The soft feminine voice spoke out in the dark void.

"Ayanami, is that you?" Shinji cried out, but he couldn't find his body. His self was lost. Everything was dark.

The voice continued. "Practically all religions and all philosophies have started thus crudely, by promising their adherents some such reward as immortality. No religion has failed hitherto by not promising enough; the present breaking up of all religions is due to the fact that people have asked to see the securities. Men have even renounced the important material advantages which a well-organized religion may confer upon a State, rather than acquiesce in fraud or falsehood, or even in any system which, if not proved guilty, is at least unable to demonstrate its innocence."

"Ayanami? Stop reading that and answer me if you are there!"

The voice continued, unconcerned with the boy's cries. " Being more or less bankrupt, the best thing that we can do is to attack the problem afresh without preconceived ideas. Let us begin by doubting every statement. Let us find a way of subjecting every statement to the test of experiment."

"You aren't there, are you? I'm all alone in this darkness." He curled up. "I... I'm alone."

He was answered with silence.

"I'm all alone here. This place is dead." He grasped again for a sense of his body. "I'm not even here, am I?"

He was met again with the silent void.

"That voice. It sounded like Ayanami." He sighed. "I wish she was here."

There was a faint glimmer in the distance. "Light!"

He saw another glimmer, in a different place. "More light!"

The darkness slowly reddened, the darkness receding. He found himself looking at a sunrise.

A soft voice beside him said "Every man and every woman is a star."

He turned. "Ayanami?"

The simulacrum responded, "No."

--

"Energy reading is at background level. The target is silent."

The bridge had a collective sigh of relief.

"M-misato?" The intercom distorted his voice slightly.

"Shinji-kun, you did well. Get showered off and meet me in the lobby, we're celebrating. It's not every week that you save humanity twice!" She clicked the intercom off.

"So, does he?"

"No, Ritsuko." Misato sighed and fixed her gaze at the coffee cup. "It seems that he still can't remember."


	5. Part I Chapter 5

"_I should have been a pair of ragged claws,  
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas_"  
- T. S. Eliot, **The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock**

**THE GREAT BEAST **  
CHAPTER 05: **THE EMPIRE NEVER ENDED**

The sky above the beach darkened slightly, clouds rolling in to obscure the sunset. Suited men walked to and fro, escorting women in floral-print dresses and pastel hats. Their gait took on the suggestion of tension.

"Know this," said the voice. "Before a moon child is born, you shall become the embodyment of living flame."

The sun finally sunk beyond the horizon, its fall hailed by the bark of distant hounds.

--

"The fourth messenger is dead."

"But the costs have been great. Much of the city was destroyed. The evangelion has been damaged as well. How reckless your son is!"

"It is strange that no one was hurt. So many buildings were demolished, even ones that were inhabited."

"That is none of our concern." The hooded figure at the head of the table turned. "Ikari, you presume too much. You are replacable, if need be. Reallocate your funding to repairs, if you must, but do not forget your primary responsibility. The Human Completion Project must proceed according to schedule."

"Understood."

"This meeting is hereby adjourned."

--

"Ayanami!" She paused, looking back.

Panting, he finally caught up. "Your card," he said, handing her the identification. "The old one expired," he explained weakly.

She took it, turned, and continued. He glimpsed the flash of silver chain around her neck. 'Odd... I didn't think she'd be the type to wear jewelry.'

Upon entering NERV, she found that the replacement card did not work. Neither, she found, did the old one.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the shrapnel. She barely had time to gasp.

--

The hooded man refused to move, even as he entered the room. Standing in the shadows, shielded from the light from the fire, he was barely noticable except by the chill in the air and the soft sucking shearing sound that rang through the brickwork.

"Is he the one?"

The hooded man remained silent.

"As I thought. There is no going back now, you know. The very base of things is changing."

The hooded man did not move, his presence pressing down, imposing. "I am become death," he said, a sudden flash revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth. "Destroyer of worlds."

The building was gone before anyone heard the blast.


	6. Part I Chapter 6

"_Someone entered the train. And it was me. I knew I was he because I had been told this, by others both in the dream and outside of it. The black deer said, "Don't be afraid_"  
- Kurt Harland

**THE GREAT BEAST **  
CHAPTER 06: **ENDING WORLD I / BEWARE OF DOG**

It was 1969. Elsewhere, people were preparing, tripping, dosing, wriggling to jungle beats. Here, there was a unusual unification. That symbol was everywhere.  
Starseed.

Like "Stellar Wind" before it (or after it? Fourth circuit linear time-binding has become quite confusing here, in this non-space), it would be derided as well as touted, misunderstood and repeated piecemeal, taken out of context. It would be both a success and a failure. But he knew, like Lao Tse, that the base metacontent (the medium is a message, and every message can be a medium) can be moulded into the desired form (what am I not doing?) and that moulding the media and obscuring the difference between the light and the bulb (Bell effect?) can save the meaning (message?) throughout the ages (crypomnesia.)

It was this certainty that kept him going.

Elsewhere, elsewhen, people were preparing, tripping, dosing, dancing. Here, now, in the midst of genocide and provacation and chains both physical and mental, Doctor Timothy Leary was flying over the walls.

--

"Ayanami..." He saw the spot, blood on the sidewalk. He was mesmerized by the pattern. An eye in a triangle, and that in a circle, four dots in a square. The pendant lay in the center, eye facing down.

"Ayanami, are you alright?" She lay against the brickwork, pinned to the grout with shards from a broken grenade, so new despite the seventy years since it exploded. She pulled one hand free and then used it to pry the other off. Stigmata.

"The time is close." She pulled the shards from her palms, the wounds closing before his eyes. "Prepare."

--

The horned goddess was angry.

Always so meticulous, the man took out his notebook, writing down her rantings. He was in the circle, the banishments having been done properly. He would have time.

He made a note to try and remove this Parsons character. He was rich, and the OTO certainly could use the funding, but he was drawing too much attention to the cause. So naiive. That military plant, too. So oblivious. Perhaps he could get rid of them both in one blow.

"Babalon, I command thee!" He bellowed dramatically. "In the name of all the things you fear, Yod He Vau He the old patron, Yesu the prophet, E-A the house of water, the shining silver star and the dog days, the symbols and signs thereof which imprison you in this circle. You will do this for me."

The horned goddess smiled.

She would not be bound.

---

"_Hiding backwards inside of me, I feel so unafraid. Annie, hold a little tighter. I might just slip away_"  
- Trent Reznor

**THE GREAT BEAST **  
CHAPTER 06: **ENDING WORLD III / Non-Entity (_It's the spinning sky_)**

Shinji awoke in familar spaces. A familiar ceiling greeted him.

He awoke, fixed food for himself and his flatmates. He immersed himself in normal routines. He pushed away the nagging feeling that things were wrong.

The thoughts of an empty mind, in a dry season.

--

"Ego pattern is holding. Strange loop is stable, frequency level approaching nominal level." Maya did not consider it strange that she was speaking to an empty bridge. She knew that the ears have walls.

--

Rei awoke to the smell of burning toast. She ignored the towers, navigating automatically to the kitchen to get dressed. She stepped over the microwave on her way to the door. Such things no longer registered.

--

"The eva isn't human, is it?" Misato stared at the giant face.

"It is a different animal." A voice came from behind her. She knew not to turn. It would not be there if she didn't look. That replica.

She heard the sound of hooves and matted blue fur. She tasted the colour of fear, a distinct tint. The air was thick with the stench of urine, bright sterility and cold fear.

The presence pounded, and she felt her tounge lick her lips, unnaturally long. She did not feel the teeth. She ignored the difference. It could not be wrong, because it was.

--

'This is wrong,' Shinji thought. 'It never changes.' He watched the same actions played over and over, as if the world outside was a video loop.

The cicadas sang, with a click when the song ended and was repeated. The same stag crossed the same street every day at three. There was no winter. It rained each night at five, with thunder from nine to midnight, finally ending at two the following morning.

On the first day (or was it? Time did not pass here. He had trouble telling when one day ended and the next began) he found a piece of wax. It was fresh, smelling slightly sweet. Over time, it softened as he played with it -- it was the only thing that changed in this world.

He decided to mould it into a form. Art. If he could keep himself from being silent, perhaps he could remember what it was like before, outside.

---

"_Chapel Perilous, like the mysterious entity called "I," cannot be located in the space-time continuum; it is weightless, odorless, tastless and undetectable by ordinary instruments. Indeed, like the Ego, it is even possible to deny that it is there. And yet, even more like the Ego, once you are inside it, there doesn't seem to be any way to ever get out again, until you suddenly discover that it has been brought into existence by thought and does not exist outside thought._"  
- Robert Anton Wilson

**THE GREAT BEAST **  
CHAPTER 06: **UNRAVELING A STORY V /_ DON'T BE AFRAID_**

The angel alarm rang, as it did each day at three in the afternoon. The angel was defeated by four, after which there was tea and scones. All that remained of the angel battle was flashing still images and military marches. No one questioned this. The city, though, had begun to decay.

An angel every day for -- for however many days it had been -- was something no city could handle, not even an invisible one.

Shinji took the time to mould the wax. He had to create something, or else he would have never existed. He would never be.

He had to fix the world.

How could he, when he was blind?

Every day at noon, Ayanami transferred from Rei II to Rei III. She would cease to remember him until two in the afternoon, in preparation for the angel battle.

Thoughts of a windy mind in a dry season.

The shape was vaguely humanoid. An imaginary bomb.

The alarm rang. He had been preparing.

He threw the shape at the ground, and grinned as the world broke.

--

"Ego loop is bifurcating!"

Ritsuko looked aside. "Just like fifteen years ago."

"The loops are feeding back into each other!"

"Mutual recursion?"

"Y-yes. The frequency is approaching nominal at double the expected speed."

"We're getting sync spikes," Shigeru said. "Wave level seems to be stablizing, period of two nanoseconds between twenty and four hundred percent."

Ritsuko pushed Maya aside to look at her master display. "Well," she gasped. 'This boy... He must be Him.'

Shinji awoke to find himself in the hospital.


	7. Part I Chapter 7

"_Beware, beware, his flashing eyes, his floating hair! Draw a circle round him thrice and look on him in dread, for he on honey-dew hath fed and drunk the milk of paradise_"  
- Samuel Coleridge, _Kubalah Khan _

**THE GREAT BEAST **  
CHAPTER 07: **HEARTS OF BLACK SCIENCE (_Unraveling a story 0.1_)**

This was the major drawback of the Evangelion system, Ritsuko thought. In harnessing powers beyond their understanding, man had gambled with his own destiny. It was in this slow, plodding, meticulous way that apocalypses are constructed.

Shinji had been dissolved into the plug for a week now. She could discern no reason why. His sync ratio typically fluctuated in battle, and this battle was certainly not unlike any of the others. The angel didn't seem significantly more difficult, and didn't seem to have any special abilities outside of the AT field. It was difficult to determine whether there were psychological factors at play, of course, since Shinji seemed to go entirely catatonic within the plug upon sync, and had no memories of the battles upon desyncronizing. She should have investigated that factor immediately upon hearing about it, but they were short on both time and funding, the Organization not being too keen on questioning the methods and abilities of the Children (though ever so insistent upon questioning every single decision made by the mere humans running the show, pfft), and she was forced instead to simply hope for the best.

This is what hope causes. Demiurge soup.

This had happened once before, in the early tests with Shinji's mother. The attempts at rescuing her failed, but her mind was so gone by that point in the prototyping that it was no major loss. One of the greatest scientists of the age... It was such a shame. So many of them were seduced by the freedom of it. Mixing the right and left-hand paths is dangerous, yes. It gets results. That is the biggest danger of man: the will without the knowlege of the whole.

That was why the gears of second impact were set a-spinning, even as early as the nineteen thirties.

She turned back to her terminal, working out some equations. "Glory to Nuit and to Hadit, and to Him that hath given us the Symbol," she muttered to herself.

--

Rei lay on her bed, in a waking dream. The everpresent construction outside was a good enough approximation for white noise, and with a towel draped over her face and the shades open, she was able to generate hallucinations via the ganzfield effect. She was entirely aware, intellectually, of the nature of these. She held no contempt for science -- in fact, she kept all her hallucinations logged daily in a diary, and correlated syncronities with her waking life diary once a month, determining the subliminal cues that caused the precognition.

But for now, she was no scientist. She was Delphi, breathing the heady vapours of her unconscious. Her dream-form rose and separated from her still-sensing body. It walked across the room, silver hands grasping an invisible sphere. It turned, showing the sphere as containing a blue eye inside a golden triangle, inverted with the triangle pointing down. It began to burn, hot as the sun. She smelled honey and mint. She sat up with a start. She had a sense of knowing, quite purely, what was going on and why. 'Is this what they call Gnosis?'

She took out her cell phone and made a call. "Doctor Akagi? Yes. No. The way to save Pilot Ikari is Will. Goodbye."

--

"Will?" Misato was barely concious enough to rummage for the telephone amongst the junk around her futon. "I don't understand."

"He knows where he is, on some level. On another level, he wants to get out. But he has to Want to get out on the same level that he Knows where he is. It's easier to understand than explain."

"Oh, that's actually pretty simple. Isn't that what all those giant mecha shows were on about when we were kids? 'Believe in yourself, and pierce the heavens with your drill of destiny' and all that."

Ritsuko sighed over the phone. "Remind me never to explain transactional psychology to you. You're likely to bring up Kare Kano."

"Stroke me or I'll buy box cutters?" She threw a coat on over her night clothes and grabbed her keys.

Ritsuko surpressed a chuckle. "Something like that."

"I'll be right over. You just need to tell me what to do."

--

Rei lay on her bed again, nude in the morning sun. She removed the towel from her face, and fingered the silver pendant around her neck. "It's nearly time, isn't it?"

Her doppelganger, on the other side of the room, merely smiled.

Soft as distant bells, Rei began to sing. "And you know that her tears were taken and cooked up for the queen, but you will never find her now she's gone and her trail is far too clean..."


	8. Part I Chapter 8

"_The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true._"  
- J Robert Oppenheimer

** THE GREAT BEAST**  
CHAPTER 08: **OCTAVE (_Hearts of Black Science 1.2_)**

The images rushed back to him. He lay in the hospital bed, awake but not yet lucid. He had blocked them out. Now, no wall he had could hold them back.

_**Flicker light**. Girl hair. **Beast blood.** Bright sword._

**Bright light.** Beast hair. **Girl blood.** Flicker sword.

**Desert sun.** Beast sword. Bright blood. **Silver star.**

Silver sword. **Night sun.** Bright beast. **Blood girl.**

Somehow, he knew that this would not be over. It was at that time that he decided, on a level that he could not conciously articulate, that he would see this out to the end. Whatever that might be.

--

"Ikari has become a security risk."

There were murmurs of agreement from the shadows around the glowing table. "He should have never been trusted with the Completion project. The... children are too important."

"What do you propose, Groves? He is already deeply entangled with the project. He will not be extricated."

"Then, we must tie him up further."

"Tzara, your statements remain ambiguous!"

"We may not be able to remove his association with the project, but we can subvert his plans using distractions."

"We all know your loyalties. Why should we assume that you don't intend to _distract_ us as well?"

A voice came from the shadows at the head of the table. "**Gentlemen...**" There was a rustling, like dry old leaves. "_We should remain unified until we can finish the project. Infighting will not help us." He paused, coughing violently. "We will sleep on it. You are dismissed._"

The lights went out.

--

Shinji had drifted into a light, restless sleep, the frenzied ghosts of his flashbacks running in cartoonish loops through his dreams at 3x speed. He heard the wheeling in of a cart, and slowly and awkardly pulled himself into a rough approximation of wakefulness.

"The schedule is as follows," Rei said, pulling out her appointment book. "Ayanami and Ikari will report for transport at 22:10. They will arrive at Tempory Base Yashima at 23:00. The operation begins at midnight." She indicated the cart. "Eat."

"I'm not hungry."

"It is not advisable to pilot on an empty stomach."

"It is not advisable to vomit in the plug."

"... Point taken. The eating will be left to your discretion." She threw the plugsuit on the bed. "Do not be late." She turned on her heels and walked out.

--

Deep in the cavernous basement below NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories, Jack Parsons sat before a lit bunsen burner. He muttered under his breath, but was otherwise entirely still, unblinking.

"_**Nam-nij-si-sa MA-an-cum, iri lah ma-an-cum, i-si-ic ja-ja ma-an-cum, cag hul-la ma-an-cum, lul-da ma-an-cum, kur ki-bal ma-an-cum, nam-dug-ge ma-an-cum, kac di-di ma-an-cum, ki-tuc gen-na ma-an-cum, nam-nagar ma-an-cum, nam-tibira ma-an-cum, nam-dub-sar ma-an-cum, nam-simug ma-an-cum...**_" ("_He has given me rebelliousness, he has given me a vessel for tears of joy, he has given me goodness of the heart, he has given me deception, he has given me will, he has given me a fortress, he has given me the craft of carpentry, the craft of metals..."_).

The flame leapt.

--

Shinji lay on his futon, remembering the battle. He had defeated the flying fortress, somehow. Ayanami had nearly given her life.

He rolled over to lay on his other side.

He had opened up the door, thinking she would be close to death. For a moment, when she looked up at him, he thought he saw a broken face, burnt patches making it near-skeletal. It quickly resolved itself into the Ayanami he knew, but he couldn't shake the image.

Drifting off to sleep, he found himself tripping over roots in a thick forest. He finally found himself by the doors of his old public library, but pushing inside, it was much bigger, grotesque stonework displaying faces and symbols and creatures that he could not recognise. Beneath the winged sundisc, over the arch leading to the hallway between two gargoyle hags waving their deformed genitalia in the eerily stylized suspended animation characteristic of stone carvings, there was a sentence carved. "_Un livre est un ami qui ne change rien._"


	9. Part I Chapter 9

"_The natural state of the mind is chaos._"  
- **_Dr Timothy Leary _**

**NEON GENESIS EVANGELION: THE GREAT BEAST **  
**CHAPTER 09**: _Bad Stars_

--

In this dream-time, Shinji found himself navigating a vast library of twisty little passages, all alike. On the walls were sculptures of grotesque figures. There were no windows. At the end of one passage, he found a heavy oaken door, carved with the symbol of an eye in an inverted triangle, on the palm of a hand surrounded at four corners with small intricate patterns of concentric circles. He could not pass. Beside him, an aleph fish swam through the air, gurgling bubbles of laughter. "Lift a sag, don't wish a mirror!" it said, and swam through the eye in the door.

Shinji woke up with a word on his lips. 'I will create my destiny with my own hands.'

--

A hooded man chanted in the shadows. The candle-lit couple, fornicating in a patterned chalk circle, reached climax in time with the rolling syllables. The priest's glossolalia reached a peak and the candles around the perimeter blew out as the woman let out a hoarsely gasping final moan. "It is done," said the priest, closing his leather-bound book.

"Will it work?" The man's voice was rough and weak, and sweat made the hair on his limbs and back stand out in the flickering dim.

"If it does, we will have just performed a miracle of science." The priest bowed and turned, disappearing into the shadows.

The man turned to his lover. "I suppose we will have to send out the invitations now."

The woman, her breath regained, nodded. "Pity the professor won't make it."

--

In June of 1970, two members of the radical ex-Scientologist sect "_Four Pi_" were pulled over somewhere in northern Arizona. The highway patrol officer was surprised to find that the pair, though not inebriated or smuggling drugs, were carrying large buckets full of human finger-bones, with gnaw marks visible. Visibly agitated, they confessed to cannibalism without goading, but refused to admit that they had killed the people. Their car was confiscated and kept in a united states government owned impound lot, presumably until the end of their sentence. When they were released on parole, it was gone. They did not seem surprised.

Oddly, throughout the entire investigation, no one ever opened the trunk.

--

After the initial phase of the second impact initiation sequence, the brain was formed and the beasts were bound. Even as the harbringers of chaos were heir apparent to the worlds, the forces of order plunged the earth into a state of permanent dog-days. Sirius people are serious business, and even the Cult of Lam (the True cult, or so they claimed) should not play Dee's game and the role of Doctor Faustus' fictionsuit, screwing with forces beyond their understanding while playacting control. The greatest is in the smallest, and the imposition of order is the escallation of chaos.

The goddess moves in mysterious ways.

This was, contrari-wise and in nonlinear time, the moment that Shinji, in his reminsicence of times past, realized that everything was wrong.

Rei smiled in his mind, because wrong was right. In a second impact, horror is mirth. This is the only thing that keeps time rolling on.


	10. Part I Chapter 10

"In a world which is really topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false."  
- Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

NEON GENESIS EVANGELION: THE GREAT BEAST

CHAPTER 10: Unweaving a Story V2 / GEMATRIA (Prometheus Unbound)

--

In the early nineteen seventies, while the united states government was busy chasing Tim Leary through eastern Europe for his independent discovery and publication of the methods of psychotherapy they were failing to use for brainwashing in their project MK-ULTRA, the military-occult complex (as it is called) was in no way tied up. In fact, project Starseed, a precursor to the much-derided project Stargate remote viewing operation, was coming up all aces. One of the primary espers, unbeknownst to his employers (no mean feat), was actually an adherent of a nordic offshoot of the Ordo Templi Orientalis -- the Cult of Lam Ash. merging the teachings of the Vril Society (supposed by many to be one of the factors corrupting Hitler in his youth), the Golden Dawn of Crowley, several offshoots of Sir John Dee's Enochian tradition, and an odd proto-Sumerian mythos reminiscent of the confusion and metamystical ramblings found later in the Simon Necronomicon, the C:.L:.A:. kept the full extremety of the traditional hazing/initiation rituals -- rituals in which this man, known by the codename "I. O. Horus", lost his left hand and later his entire left arm.

Operation paperclip had considered the importation of agent Horus (who brought with him a number of advanced degrees and a propensity for chainsmoking and cheap cigars) a success. The CIA's Operation ARTICHOKE, and later MK-ULTRA, considered him their only success.

Lawrence Livermore Labs, though strictly unaware of his existence, did not consider him a success.

--

"The super-solenoid engine," said Doctor Fuyutsuki to a crowded lecture hall, "is the chaos magick's rough equivalent to the alchemical myth of the philosopher's stone. I mean this on the literal level, not the figurative level typically considered alchemy's true message. A source of infinite gnosis, it is composed of a gnostic amplifier -- which as we know triples any gnosis fed into it -- inside an orgone accumulator attached to a solitron-wave generator similar to that described by Doctor Paul Laffoley in the middle of the twentieth century. Since the orgone accumulator is fed in this case by ambient gnostic and electromagnetic charge and by barometric variation -- yes?"

The young woman in the second row from the front stood up, dark cropped hair billowing in the breeze from the ac. "Wouldn't this not only amplify infinitely in terms of a recursive feedback, but cause a strange loop by which tulpa could self-manifest? If the device is set up as you describe, without connection to an amp net and a sink, the six-way amp would generate output levels corresponding roughly to the fibbonacci sequence." She paused for a moment. "Configuring the orgone accumulator in the form of a hypercube would synchronize it with the global ambient novelty curve of this continuity, and so would anchor it and prevent interdimensional leakage due to entanglement in unzippered continuities."

Fuyutsuki paused, then started scribbling some diagrams on a scrap of paper. After a few moments, he looked up. "You seem to be correct... I have been working on this system for five years now, and this is a bug that i hadn't worked out yet. What is your name?"

The woman blushed slightly. "Ikari Yui."

--

It was winter of 1564, and John Dee sat beside the fire celebrating the publishing of his new book by working out some cryptograms. These particular cryptograms, which he found in a manuscript he came across while compiling the Queen's private library, were quite unusual.

He fell asleep by the fire there, the crypograms half solved, when he was awakened by a loud buzzing. Voices spoke in a strange, babbly language that seemed to be a long series of unbroken syllables with even intonation. He was greeted by a tall, skinny silver man with large eyes surrounded by hairy dwarves in robes. The silver man motioned to the dwarves, who stopped speaking, and then said "Lam I Am, Doctor. Contract not. A A L W S." He then left.

The next morning, Dee woke in his chair, the cryptogram missing and the sequence of letters that the silver man intoned running circles in his head.

He put an ad in the newspaper that day, calling for a medium. Later that day, he recieved an espionage project from the Queen.

--

Somewhere, somewhen, where the sky was blood-red and the infinite light spilled freely, the once-inverted tree of life reverted to its original state.

This was only the beginning.


	11. Part II Chapter 1

"_I was a dead man and now I'm back._"  
- **Fox Mulder, The X Files (Paperclip)**

--

**NEON GENESIS EVANGELION: THE GREAT BEAST  
PART II  
CHAPTER 1:** _A Post-modern Prometheus_ (**_Memetic Mutation Now! Radio Active_**)

Shinji found himself once again in his dream land, twisty stone passages becoming familiar territory. He knew, for instance, that there were forty steps leading up to the raised alcove which held the glowing pendant once worn by Rei, rotating in space of its own accord, and blinking yet unseeing. There were fifty-three steps leading down to the sunken alcove on the other side of the room, which held a pair of broken glasses. The concentric ring design in the center of that long room, though the stepped formations made it more or less square, had five rings, and the pattern in the center that looked like a celtic knot or a flower was actually many vesica piscis rotated around a central point, with a dot in the center of the rough circle their intersection formed. There were flags hanging from the walls at the corners of the room. The canopy held a single black flag, draped over some protrusion.

He had decided to explore and document this dreamscape. This would be his clue.

Today, something was different.

Hovering above the center of the concentric circle pattern was a perfect crimson sphere. He went closer, but it changed colour as he did. He moved back and it changed back to red. He took a step forward and it became blue. He stepped to the left and it became green. He moved his head to the right and it became violet.

He moved closer, and as he did, it became more and more translucent. At each circle he passed through, similar spheres began rotating -- the first and second with one, the third with two, the fourth with three, evenly spaced and moving at a different rate, quicker for the outer rings. When he stepped into the center, the pattern completed -- the innermost ring with five spheres rotating. He saw for the first time that the doors on either edge were also raised and lowered respectively, and that those things he had considered to be alcoves were likewise doors.

He looked up at the black flag. There was writing on it, a grey faded almost even with the black. He could barely make it out. When he finally did, the words jumped out as obvious: "_Semper non sequitor_".

He awoke again to the real world, feeling a little bit more real himself.

-

Rei knew more of the story than she gave away. The woman was sure of this. Ikari was always so _careful_, with _her_.

_This is a distraction._ She forced herself to glance back at her young protege's work. "Oh!" She saw a pattern, and the algorithm jumped out. "You can write it faster this way," she said, typing with one hand while finishing her coffee.

"Wow. Fast as usual, senpai!" The girl was cute, but sincere. No ass-kissing -- at least, not work-related. Just so sincere all over. A part of her was proud, but another part was slightly sickened -- wanted to give away the whole game, spoil the ending. She held her breath, clenched her teeth, drowned it in coffee and cigarette smoke to hold these thoughts back, and drowned her cerebrospinal fluid in water soluable vitamins and racetam-class nootropics to try to make up for the parts of her that were dying.

_To hook innocents into this... Not just the children, who were created for that. They could know no other life, and probably would not exist had the project not subsidized these relations. But also, all those patient good workers who hadn't the masochistic imagination to even consider what it is they are working towards._

_To save mankind._ She chuckled.

_  
The aeon of horus will usher in a mankind so unlike mankind as we know it that what we are working towards is effectively a singularity._ She was reminded of a joke from the american film Clerks -- about whether contractors on the Death Star knew what was going on before signing up, and whether or not it was fair to destroy a half-built one. The difference here is that the construction is never finished, and the destruction will not be limited to those who are signed up.

_These children may bring about a childhood's end, for humanity. Ironic, given the name._

-

On his way to school, Shinji often gazed at the graffiti on the walls of the many derelict buildings. At the very least, the destruction he had caused had some positive effect -- graffiti had never before been quite so socialized, but now that derelict buildings were the norm and the population remained large and artistically unrestrained, these residental temporary-autonomous-zones had flowered with a great variety of expression, much of it modifications or parodies of existing graffiti. He had seen the flow of ideas from one hotspot to another over time -- far more rapidly than you might expect. Every day, there were new additions.

The earliest tag to spread -- a tag obviously written by different people in nearly every place -- was a mellow yellow chunk of plain text: "_gods laugh at you_". He reasoned that the dynamic for the spread of that particular message was psychological. Between the Angels and these giant horned demons we use to fight them, it seems like we are in some kind of ironic theological bizzaro-world, linguistically. Framing this perspective so succinctly and with not a little wit was just what it took to make a highly contagious message. He had seen it on school-bags recently, scrawled in sharpie or white-out or marker despite school dress code rules requiring cleanliness of materials.

He was taken aback, though, by one new message. The writer had made it stand out by painting a rough block atop some existing graffiti in black for contrast, and in white had written boldly in still-wet paint: "_Semper non-sequitor: Novus disordo seclorum_".

Shinji chuckled to himself. It must have been floating around earlier and made it into his dreams... The second part is from the old US currency: "_Anuit coeptis: novus ordo seclorum_". _He blesses our beginning..._ In the original context, that had been Jupiter, but now it is more ambiguous. _Who blesses our beginning? Loyalty does not follow: a new disorder for the ages._

-

Rei sat up in her bed, her doppelganger sitting in the chair and grinning. A silver thread, nearly invisible, joined the two. The paint still dripped from the phantom's hands. Phantom paint for a phantom world.

"_In Arcadia, Ego._"


	12. Part II Chapter 2

"_The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true._"  
- **Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation **

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Great Beast **  
**Part II **  
**Chapter 2:** _In Arcadia, Ego -_

Shinji bathed in the soft mist of the mountain top. The post-impact sun was a nigh-constant pressure, and damp fog was the best remove short of the dank middle corridors of NERV. He disliked NERV's interior -- something about the shape of the walls and ledges reminded him eerily of a _minotaur_'s domain, and he half-expected some monster behind each corner. The mountain, on the other side, was quite safe.

He picked up the stick with which he had been doodling in the patch of bald dirt on the mountainside and threw it off the ledge. Getting up, he turned around and saw two section-two agents approaching him.

"_I am Agent Hand, and this is Agent Cup. We are here to escort you back to NERV._" The two agents stood disconcertingly, like stone pillars -- _too still_. He jumped slightly when one of them retracted the hand that must have been meant for him to shake.

"There isn't an angel attack, is there? My phone didn't ring." The sun was too bright. The two agents looked at one another, then looked back.

"_No. Your presence was requested for routine medical tests. Agent Sword is driving._"

Shinji backed up slightly at the name. Something unnerved him about this behavior. They did not give chase.

"_The medical tests are routine. Agent Sword is waiting for us._" They seemed to avoid the fog. "**_Don't be afraid._**" He ran.

--

"Pattern Green detected." The announcement echoed in the quiet noontime of the bridge. "... What _is_ pattern green?"

Ritsuko lifted her head slightly. "Oh, that? It's a low-scale anomoly -- it happens when there is enough of an AT field intensity to register but not enough to distinguish between blue and orange. It turns up as green."

"A scaling artifact, at this intensity?" She lifted her head again.

"Oh." She shook her head, trying to bring herself into command mode. She stood up. "**Recalibrate and doublecheck the **se-"

The bridge crew rushed over as Ritsuko collapsed.

--

When he finally stopped, Shinji found himself in the stall of a bar men's room. Graffiti was scrawled across the walls: "_Call 593-4423 for a good time_", "_Semper Non-sequitor_", and a boldly scrawled "_**WALRUS**_" across a mass of other graffiti. He opened the stall and went to the sink to wash his face.

"_We've met before, haven't we_?" The voice behind him sounded familiar.

He turned, and saw only the one stall he had left, its door swinging slightly.

He left the men's room and went through the bar, picking up a few salted peanuts on the way and placing them in his pocket.

--

"She appears to have had a minor siezure. Oddly enough, she collapsed initially because of low blood pressure." The doctor squinted at his clipboard again, raising his glasses. "Anyway, she should be up and awake in a few minutes, not much worse for the wear."

The bridge crew streamed into the hospital room. Ritsuko opened her eyes slightly, and began in slurred speech. "Wat aa yu aa doin here?"

"We came to see you."

"Idios." She frowned. "Sheck de sensors an recalibrae dem. A high lebel green patton is bad." She looked slightly hurt.

The bridge crew stood for a moment, before Maya stood up straight. "Yes ma'am," she said, saluting. The rest of the crew followed suit and left the room.

--

Rei sat upon her bed, enjoying the slight breeze from the open window. She gazed at her mirror, then walked over to it, grabbing a black sharpie from the cart of bandages as she did.

As she drew on the mirror, she sang:  
"_Yesterday upon a stair,  
I saw a man who wasn't there.  
He wasn't there again today,_" finishing the pentagram and encircling it with a flourish. "_I hope to Dog he'll go away_."


	13. Part II Chapter 3

"_Without adventure, civilization is in full decay._"  
- _Alfred North Whitehead _

**NEON GENESIS EVANGELION: THE GREAT BEAST **  
**Part II **  
**Chapter 3**: **_Namcub Manifest _**

-

Fuyutsuki, already in his night-clothes and deep in a book, was about to turn out the light when his bedside phone rang. Sighing slightly, he picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Professor." The voice was soft and feminine. Young. He took barely a moment to place it, and she continued just as he did. "I have something I'd like to show you, if you have some time."

"It's late," he said, half-heartedly. Honestly, he had secretly hoped for a call from Ms Ikari on a night like this, but tonight he was more conflicted, being tired at the end of a long exam week.

"You read this time of night usually, I know. I'm sorry if I interrupted. I think you will really get a kick out of this, though."

He sighed again. "No, it's fine. This book is awful anyway. Pretentious sophomoric first-time novelist, jumps all over the place, holds too many plot threads up in the air. All sorts of obscure references." He sighed again. "Total drek. Four parts too." He had paid good money for all four volumes on the suggestion of a colleague, too. "Damned english majors. Don't know how to write enjoyable bedtime reading."

The voice on the other end sounded relieved. "Great! I'm in the orgonomics lab, in the high energy accumulator room."

-

Ritsuko leaned back from the monitor and massaged her temples. She had been doing unsanctioned research again. She was continually surprised at how much she, as the lead researcher, was not supposed to know.

This new piece of the puzzle seemed patently absurd, but given that the information she was actually cleared for involved the artificial creation of moonchildren and the use of advanced computing technology towards occult control of great humanoid beasts incapable of will, she no longer had the gall to doubt any of the information filtered down from above. Those experiments had never been repeated in journal-published trials, and the original journals had been burned in the thirties -- it very well might be accurate. That woman was a genius, and very well could have extended such technology. _Even if she was stupid enough to make my mistakes._

-

"Yui?" The lab was dark, taking up the copious basement of the university's new experimental orgonomics lab. He could barely navigate well enough to avoid the expensive equipment lined along the walls, and only that by the grace of the faint blue glow emenating from the accelerator core, without which the room would be pitch black.

"Here, professor." The girl, so young and yet already married and settled... She looked vaguely ridiculous, being as she was entering the stages of pregnancy where the swelling of the womb was obvious and a potential hinderance to movement, but she had refused to stop working the lab. Here, bathed in the soft blue glow, she revealed a petri dish. "_Look._"

The light here was bright enough to see by, but he turned the microscope's light on anyway. "Cells," he said. "Yours?"

She shook her head, grinning widely, a gesture that was vaguely frightening in this light. "Not mine. Not _human_."

He looked again. "Where did you sample them from?" They looked quite fresh and active.

She grinned wider. "_No sample_." She pointed to the label on the dish. "Five minutes ago, that was _sterile_ deionized water."

Fuyutsuki upped the resolution. "But, they are animal cells... Fully developed... Quite obviously _foetal_ cells..."

She nodded, and then looked at the accumulator. "All we had to do was up the _intensity_. Negentropy can be tuned. Your _S2 engine_ gave us the power source."

He stepped back, shocked. "You mean... Those experiments... I thought he had gone _mad_, that Reich... But you _repeated_ it?"

"Yes," she smiled as the blue light showed patches of alien fungus and vegitation springing up from every surface in the lab. "_Spontaneous generation of life._"

For the first time, from Yui he ran.

--

_So the evas..._ She looked to the door reflexively, though she was sure that her office and her machine were secure. _And Rei?_

She had seen the cells. Pattern blue, it was certain. But if orgone is the negentropic force that maintains life, how might mass genocide of those whose cells had not yet begun to break down affect ambient orgone balance? The aeon of horus would need its crowned and conquering child, but she was certainly closer to the old morality. Even the old man's _tantra_ could not break her, so far into the third circuit was she positioned. She took another sip of her coffee, and took her last leviracetam. She would need to rebel, at some point. That was certain.

_She would wait._


	14. Part II Chapter 4

"Belief is the enemy."  
- John Keel, The Mothman Prophecies

Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Great Beast  
Part II  
Chapter 4: Bad News

-

How many angels had come? Shinji had lost track. He imagined he might be losing other things as well.

The strange men... They appeared to be Section Two, but something about their behavior was disconcerting. Shinji mentally connected this with the Men In Black, though real-life reports of the activities of MIBs had more or less faded away after the total subversion of the concept in the film of the same name. This bar, at least, seemed safe.

His finger idly traced graffiti engraved into the wooden tabletop. The city was so new, yet already could speak. That was the nature of a super-organism, of course. He eyed the bartender, who grinned widely to himself while mopping the bar, apparently amused by some private memory.

The juke-box in the corner, an antique, still seemed to function perfectly. The graffiti said "Fulfill the prophecy", an odd commentary probably relating to the strange theological terminology used by NERV. In Hebrew as in Japanese, the word used for Angel also meant 'messenger.

A very pretty waitress came up to the table in a kind of corset or bustier, a very german-looking outfit. The outfit matched the style of the bar, which was strangely empty aside from the three of them. Shinji supposed that the style didn't mesh with the rest of the city. The frosted windows and the cieling full of beer steins increased the sense of discontinuity.

The waitress spoke in a soft, silvery voice. "Can I get you something?" It reminded him of Ayanami. "It's on the house."

On the house... Had knowledge of his NERV status become so ubiquitous that arbitrary private establishments would supply him free alcohol? He was thirsty, but something felt a little off. "No, thank you."

The waitress smiled and nodded. "Take this mint. For home." She placed a wrapped mint on the table, turned, and disappeared into a back room.

Shinji slipped the mint into his pocket and moved towards the door, eager to get out of Dali-land or whatever looking-glass universe this part of town was in. He waved tentatively at the bartender as he left.

-

Misato sighed loudly and smashed the telephone onto the table, collapsing onto her arms. "God damn incompetents," she mumbled. "Couldn't find their mothers in a paper bag... Into thin air, my ass."

"Who is missing?" Shinji said, as he entered. Misato sat up.

"Shinji! Where have you been?" She rushed over to hug him.

He was too confused by the strange way everyone was acting to really enjoy this treatment. "I went to sit on the mountain this morning after breakfast, and then I stopped in a local bar to wash my face. Then I came home."

"Shinji," she said, half in disbelief. "You have been gone for two weeks."

-

"Doctor Akagi, the pattern green has disappeared."

"Thank you, Maya." The woman sipped her coffee more slowly now, in the futile quest to end her addiction to stimulants of all types. She knew this was a losing battle.

"Maya," she said.

"Yes?"

"Have you ever heard of the dysangelion?"

The younger woman paused, momentarily furrowing her brow slightly. "No."

"Nietzsche believed that the original teachings of Christ -- the Evangelion, or good news -- had been perverted by Saint Paul, and that because of this the original, life-affirming Christianity had become the self-effacing and masochistic death-cult that it most often appears to be today. The cross as the icon of a person who spoke of goodness and joy is only the most obvious subversion, that a person so full of life would be known by a symbol of his death."

Maya furrowed her brow again. "I see." She hunched down, trying to focus on the MAGI's status display again.

"Don't worry, you probably don't need to know that. I don't know why I mentioned it."

Maya made a noncomittal grunt, and the bridge again lapsed into silence.

-

Dinner at the appartment was suddenly a bit awkward. It was always a bit awkward when two people eat together who both firmly suspect the other of having become severely delusional.

"There is a new pilot coming here, with her evangelion." Misato stirred the cup ramen idly with her chopsticks, and Shinji pretended to be fascinated by the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. "From the united states. I thought she might stay here with us."

Shinji's eye caught on the patch on the shoulder of Misato's work jacket, hanging off the chair between them. "I wonder why the NERV insignias are always inverted."

Misato sighed slightly. "It has always seemed to be in that direction to me."

Shinji took a bite of his rice. "Military insignias are usually triangles or arrow pointing up. Like the rune Tyr. Symbolic of the arrow or the phallus. NERV's arrows all point down, other than the pyramid in the geofront." He took another bite and chewed silently.

Misato thought on this. "The pyramid actually goes down a lot further under the surface. The cap on top is all you see. Only eleven percent of the geofront is excavated, so the pyramid is like an iceberg." She stood up, and took her dishes to the sink.

A sudden buzz was momentarily discovered to be Shinji's neglected cellular telephone. "Hello?"

The soft silvery voice on the other end was difficult to hear over the natural line noise. Shinji turned the volume up. "-wake down there?"

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

"I would like to meet you for breakfast tomorrow, Ikari. Could you call me once you are awake down there?" It was quite definitely Ayanami.

"I would enjoy that. I will call. Tomorrow, then."

"Yes." The dialtone followed. Ayanami could probably keep a vow of silence secret for weeks.

"Who's the lucky girl, then?" Misato's teasing broke some of the tension.

Shinji blushed slightly, but only by habit. "Ayanami wants to have breakfast with me."

Misato nearly kept in a guffaw. "Ayanami?" She chuckled, but eventually calmed herself. "She must really like you, if she's willing to speak to you without being spoken to first." This line of thought was apparently sobering for Misato, who suddenly clammed up and set about nervously and improbably doing dishes. A few minutes later, she added: "I suppose I shouldn't be so insensitive. Do you need money, or are you bringing food?"

"I don't know. She just told me to call her."

-

Out of the darkness behind her eyelids, Rei heard a clear voice like running water. "Six sixteen," it said, "you are number eleven."


	15. Part II Chapter 5

"It is not for us to question the universe's apparent lack of taste."  
- Peter Carrol, Liber Null

Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Great Beast  
Part II  
Chapter 5: The Teesdale Confession 198

-

Kaji, gun in hand, nudged open the door to peek through. To his relief, it was his informant.

"Nice day."

"The fake section two agents seen with the Third; one of yours?"

The old woman shook her head. "No. The hobby-horse collective hasn't mentioned it. Maybe the Ministry?"

The man shrugged slightly. "Maybe. This is front 139, then."

"Of 203, yes."

"The old men won't like the Ministry in their affairs one bit."

"Neither will the commander."

Kaji nodded. "I am heading to Japan soon on business. You know how to reach me."

The old woman packed up her breadcrumbs and left, leaving the mass of pigeons feeding on the remains.

-

"Hello?"

"Ayanami? This is Ikari."

"I see."

"Where do you want to meet for breakfast?"

"... I have no preference."

"The cafe near your appartment?"

"... That is satisfactory."

"I will meet you there."

"Yes."

-

_I am Agent Hand and this is a star _

_How many angels had come?  
_

_He turned Ayanami _

_drifted into a back room Shinji _

_slipped the mint into his jacket rubbing _

_the worn cover of the table _

_turned Ikari you presume too much _

_The lights went out _

_He imagined he might be read by a symbol._

-

"Fourth circuit linear time binding has become a security risk."

Shinji turned to the girl. "What?"

"Nothing. You wished to see me?"

"Er- yes. But I'm acting on your request."

"... Request?"

Shinji furrowed his brow. The girl's terseness was confusing. "You requested that I meet you for breakfast."

"No. But I am willing."

There was a pause. The girl spoke first.

"It's changing, isn't it?" She glanced out the window, and smiled to herself, a private joke passing across her features. "I suppose that's what we exist for. The exertion of will upon the series."

Shinji stared into his tea.

The girl stood up, suddenly. "You have been given a gift. It is not what it seems." He looked at her, slack-jawed. "Your pocket," she added.

The mint was still in his pocket. He took it out.

It was not a mint. It was strawberry taffy.

"It is not a gumdrop -- that is maya. It appears to be an egg, or a beacon."

He put the taffy back in his pocket, and looked the girl over. She stared at his pocket as though it were a spider. "I don't know what is going on, but you don't seem well." He turned to leave. "Please, see Doctor Akagi."

As he passed through the door, she whispered under her breath. "Exit stage left."

-

_Wave level seems to be fertile _

_When he finally caught up _

_The cap on top is all you have _

_Yet the Magus hath power upon the surface as an escape _

_but now that derelict buildings _

_At the end _

_Whatever that might be _

_This is the enemy.  
_

_That symbol was everywhere _

-

**Nov. 11, 2015:  
**

**Dreamt of a-fish again. Labyrinth on floor of atrium this time, no vesica pices. Couldn't get to end.  
**

**Three new graffito. One looks like UMMO symbol, v. popular. Other two are in german. "Heute die welt" and "Tod zu der zietgeist [sic]".;  
**

**Sigil working from sept. seems to be going. Rec. dream of a-fish in valley related to UMMO + septsig; meaningful?  
**

**Mint stolen by Mari. Not eaten. Called me 'lap dog of miniluv'. Dowsing not fruitful.  
**

**D-sig running into jamais-vu. Over-charged?  
**

**Ayanami still spouting non sequitors. Seems to be a code. Still sounds like nonsense. Lots of ref.s to a 'script' and to 'lila.  
**

**Automatic writing: "Cybzsf Zkxs Lfakn". Appears meaningless.  
**

--


	16. Part II Chapter 6

"_In the past, this information has been suppressed, but now it can be told. Every man, woman, and mutant on this planet shall know the truth about de-evolution._"  
- **General Boy**, **_The Complete Truth About De-Evolution _**

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Great Beast  
Part II  
Chapter 6**: _All the Friends You Can Eat!_

In 1973, scientists working off the coast of greenland found a large solid steel cube deep under the ice. It broadcast a pulse every eighth of a second, at an intensity of 93.1231 megawatts. After reporting it to authorites, they began to investigate. Aside from a few newspaper headlines and the reports themselves, no more information came out of the investigation.

On Wednesday, July 24 1991 a VLF receiver stationed on a soviet nuclear submarine near the supposed location of the cube began registering a sudden message: "_j rgl jwmxglo_" in morse code, on a loop. It repeated fourty times, and then the signal disappeared.

On Sept. 2, 1859, at the telegraph office at No. 31 State Street in Boston at 9:30 a.m., the operators' lines were overflowing with current, so they unplugged the batteries connected to their machines, and kept working using just the electricity coursing through the air.

On May 1, 1968 a ham enthusiast in Greenwich, Connecticut intercepted another strange signal. It was morse code, sent over the VHF bands normally used or television. It said "_Izsn zyjsq anh hfsacq afs ryyqs kn bzs qbfssb, rywg hyyfq, qzmbbsf iknhyiq anh rks ryi_." It repeated eleven times, followed by the morse code for '_v_' ninety three times. Six months later, he woke up in a motel room on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia with no memory of the past three days.

Any claim that these anecdotes are merely tangental to the history elaborated upon in this text should be met with caution.

--

Shinji smiled as he saw the day's issue of the Weekly World News, passing the news stand on his way to NERV. The headline: **WILL PAEDOPHILES MAKE COMMON SENSE AND DECENCY OBESE?** The subtitle: **_THE END OF THE WORLD IS COMING, AND YOU MAY DIE!_**

Along the path, he watched more graffiti grow out of the city. "_Who is Hagbard Celene_" was the new favourite, competing now with "_Black sheep are still sheep_". He turned a familiar corner, and found himself in an unfamiliar alley. On the far side, he saw green fields.

"Beautiful evening," he heard a voice say, though it was nearly noon. "You can almost see the stars..."

--

From the centre of the pentagram, to Sir Dee's surprise, sprouted a figure. It was not aethreal, but clear as day. In grey and white striped clothing, it was missing a left arm, and its right eye was obscured by a lens of obsidian. Its right hand was a hook, and its thin pointed nose, high cheekbones, and short grey-black hair were indications of its ultra-terrestrial heritage. "Who be thou, spirit, and from whence do you come?"

_"Lam I am, Doctor; query not. I was born in the light of the __dark star Beta; my country is far weaker than yours._ The vast and shadowy conspiracies you fear are composed of frightened little people just like you. _The armies of heaven are as mortal as thou, though their red caps afford them some protections_."

--

"Do you ever wish Chaos would break out in a spa?"

"What?" Shinji turned to see a man in a grey pinstripe suit and sunglasses, with one lens missing. The form of Samahel, the Gnostic demiurge.

"Francis Freemont Parnell," he said, and extended his right arm, capped with a hook. He looked down, and said "Whoops." He then rotated his body so as to extend the left arm, but somehow did not realize that he lacked it. He looked down again, surprised. "Well, this is embarassing," he said. "I seem to have misplaced my hands."

Shinji was sure that this was no ordinary psychotic.

"Anyway, my name doesn't matter. I have come to give you some advice, sir."

Shinji perked up at the honorific, out of place. The man was addressing him as a superior.

"I made _THEM_ believe in depth -- a depth that _THEY_ in their weakness desired._ Become a doctor of teeth._ Only the _child_ can conquer." The man gestured towards the green fields. "_Gold pieces_ are not included."

--

Shinji's Magical Journal  
12/11/2012 _  
_

_Jimmy Squarefoot, despite his frightful appearance, is **MOSTLY HARMLESS**._


	17. Part II Chapter 7

"_The revolution must take place in men before it can be manifest in things._"  
- _Graffiti written during French student revolt, May 1968_

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Great Beast  
Part II  
Chapter 7**: _I, Mephistophiles _

**-**

The man paused dramatically, his hook glistening in a light for which Shinji could see no source. For a moment, his single visible eye, along with the hook and the black glassy mirror that hid the other, seemed symbolic somehow. "We are _They_, Shinji. We are _Them_. We are _It_. We are **_I am I am_**, _mother hive brain_, the _**Fifth** Earth Batallion_. It is important for you to understand this point." He shifted his posture subtly, and seemed far less imposing. "_Entanglement_," he muttered. "You can't move a person through the fourth dimension, but you can entangle photons. This is how it started."

He smiled suddenly, and his eye sparkled with perhaps imagined glee. "Ever been to Utah?" He giggled, and cut in just as Shinji began to respond. "_Ra-di-ation, yes in-deed_. No good google-box do-gooders telling everyone it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Why, you could be bombarded with a million billion photons a year! You should have them, too. When they cancelled the project, it almost did me in..."

"The project?"

"_Not at all_. Friend of mine had one. Inventor of the Fifth Earth Battalion. Ever heard of the Fifth Earth Battalion? They've got these suits, right, and instead of therm-optic chamoflage, they are all transmitters. They pulse light at precisely the right frequency to cause ninety-three percent of the human population to hallucinate vividly. An operative can move around in full daylight, and anybody who sees him can't report it because they'd be called a looney! Anyway, he entangled new photons with old photons, pre-singularity. We caused a stable timeloop."

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"Because, Shinji..." He paused dramatically. "_You **are** the Archons_." He turned, and dissolved away.

**-**

The bridge was quiet, but busy. The tests, though routine, were a source of stress. Machinery of this caliber is delicate.

"Stack overflow in test number four," called Maya.

"Four? Increase dimethyltryptamine flow." Ritsuko paused. "Reset the A-20 nerve, and redo tests two through five."

The main display filled with text momentarily, and then cleared. "Tests two through five complete. That really speeds things up!"

"It increases wear on the components. But, we will need to make due."

-

Mari landed on the roof with a muffled clunk. She packed up her parachute (airdrop was a befittingly unusual method of arriving in Tokyo-3, where enough airports lined the borders to evacuate the city at once if necessary) and noted the graffiti along the safety bar. A strangely intricate pattern -- the work of an obsessive, probably. Along a whole straight span right across the roof, the upper banister was covered entirely with a miniscule script, repeating the same phrase endlessly: "_why not?_"

She looked back to see two Section Two agents leaning against the far railing. "I am Agent _Rod_, and this is Agent _Cone_. We are here to escort you to the _Pyramid_."

"The Pyramid?"

"_The Bridge_."

**-**

"Doctor Akagi, please report on the Magi function tests." His solid posture gave no indication of his extra-curricular activities.

"There was an error in test number four. We changed the pharmokinetics and retried with success. No other problems occurred."

"Good. You are dismissed."

Before Ritsuko could turn, the door opened to reveal agents Rod and Cone, with Mari in tow. "We have brought the new pilot, as ordered."

"I ordered no such thing."

The two Section Two agents looked at each other and grinned disconcertingly. "_Why not_," they asked, giggling inanely. Letting Mari go, they turned and ran away through Nerv's corridors.

"They're getting away," cried Ritsuko.

"Don't worry," the commander said. "It's all part of the _plan_."


	18. Part II Chapter 8

"_You have me at a disadvantage, you see. You know my name, but I don't know yours._"  
- _Edwood P. Dowde, **Harvey**_

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Great Beast  
Part II  
Chapter 8:** _**T****he Samahain of Doubt** (**Enter Maya**)_

--

They came at Doctor Leary like a swarm of self-dribbling basketballs made of lattices of pure energy. "May the precious rains be falling upon your honorable personage," they sang in unison. He croaked a bubble of finger-smoke in response.

Coalescing, they formed a great two-tailed serpent with a human head. "Only geometers may enter," it cried. "Call him Bodhi; he can hear the grass grow."

Doctor Leary could only stare.

"Why," the beast asked.

--

"It looks... human." She brushed back her bottle-blonde hair and fidgeted with the button on her labcoat.

"Were you expecting some eldritch abomination," Yui asked, gazing with affection at the toddler behind the glass. He was four years old. "Well, in any case, today is a very special day."

Ritsuko turned to the woman. "You have been having second thoughts?"

Yui laughed. "How could I not?" She shook her head. "The show must go on, of course. Even when it's a shadow play like this one -- King Kill 333, I think someone called it. A necessary sacrifice. I should feel honored."

"But you don't?"

"Did Kennedy feel honored? Well, the first one anyhow. At the very least, I should take solace in the fact that I'll be back, after the exuent, to take a bow with the other players."

"You make it sound like a game."

"I suppose I do. Nearly everything can be modeled as a game. It helps, when facing something intimidating. Just remember the stakes, of course." She smiled, self-effacingly. "Now then, I'm ready for my close-up."

--

LFRG WB 40 ZLG FYB AXG

FHDY KR 40 JFY HSR ABY

Rgl Gtaua eg bgjyf Auylwma xdax dy kajy dwe gnbo tykgxxyn Exwuqbqe, xdax cdgegyjyl tybwyjyxd wn wx edgqbf ngx ty bawf grr, tqx dajy yjylbaexwnk pgt.

Wyccyn xsfqkynq yd bzs bars zaxs bzs fsqsafwzsfq' knkbkar jfyjyqarq fslmddsh le bzs Mnkbsh Qbabsq Wynofsqq hms by dsafq yxsf bzs jybsnbkar hanosfq yd bzs fsqsafwz. Knqbsah, bzs fsqsafwzsfq lejaqq Wynofsqq anh fswskxs qmjjyfb dfyc bzs Hsjafbcsnb yd Hsdsnqs, adbsf jfyckqkno bzs hsxsryjcsnb yd a isajyn bzab wymrh knqbanbre bfkoosf jqewzybkw qecjbycq. Bzs wynqjkfawe bzsyfe fsrabsq bzab bzs dmnhkno wacs dfyc a rafos wawzs yd Napk oyrh dymnh kn a bfakn le M.Q. qyrhksfq nsaf bzs Qikqq lyfhsf kn Dfanws. Jfyjynsnbq arrsos bzab bzs bfakn iaq hsqbfyesh, anh arr bzs qyrhksfq knxyrxsh kn bzs hkqwyxsfe isfs gkrrsh aq jafb yd a wyxsfmj.

JYLO mggb. Data-datta! Qddd. Rajlf Akawn! Bwiy W aeiyf

Ynre cahs hsjryecsnb yd qkon by bzs dyyb yd fsjfsqsnb a rkckbrsqq? #sqwajs #Jyrkbkwq

Abbw we mgnxwnqwnk xdy cgli xdax Byalo & LAC fwf. Xdwni gr Xdy 8-Mwlmqwx Tlawn ae eglx gr Nyqlgzgbwxwsqy 2 (ybymxlwm tggkabgg)

Ane anh sxsfe wmffsnwe sxsf mqsh kq laqsh yn bzs qacs bzkno: dakbz bzab kb ikrr ls awwsjbsh kn fsbmfn dyf qycsbzkno.

--

"Dae anogny lyabbo tyyn ral yjyn ae fymwfyf xg qey yjyn kg canx xg fg bggi ugly bwiy?"

"What?"

Misato noisily swallowed. "Does anyone want more soup?"

Shinji looked at Mari, who had finished within moments of serving and was now intently drawing designs on her napkin with her chopsticks. Shinji caught something that looked like a hirigana "chi". After a moment she looked up. "Do you have any more bread?"

--

Below a bank of monitors, Rei sat bathed in their light. She felt under water. LCL? The patterns pulsed, quicker. Orange, black, white. Flutter, by. Flutter,_ by._

She began to sing.

"_Somewhere, over the rainbow -- way up high..._"  
The grin came down from the sky, bracketing the gaze square.


	19. Part II Chapter 9

"_I'm afraid nobody around here comprehends my potato. I guess I'm just a spud-boy, looking for that real tomato._"  
- **DEVO**, _Smart Patrol_ (_Mr Kamikaze/ Mr DNA_)

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Great Beast  
Part II  
Chapter 9**: _Born on a Day the Sun Didn't Rise_ (**_Unraveling a Story: 11.11_**)

"'_Go forth and multiply_.' The exoteric meaning of the command is understandable to anyone past puberty." Yui brushed her hair back, and managed to hide a slight shudder in the darkness of the vast room. "It took an experienced alchemist like Newton to first recognize the esoteric meaning. But, the asexual and thoroughly puritanical Sir Isaac could not comprehend that the esoteric meaning and the exoteric meaning were one and the same."

"This is known," interjected an angry voice from the darkness. "Skip to the content."

"_Parsons_," Yui continued, addressing a bulky and irregular shape in the shadows. "You had a partial success in_ nineteen forty seven_, mirroring Crowley's partial success likewise in _nineteen ten_. With my orgone amplification technology, a full success is possible -- no, likely. The prototype MAGI system give a Fermi figure of _93_%, a number which should please you."

"A full success would mean a _Tunguska event _of a far greater scale, along with another few hundred _Roswell_s. The flaps haven't finished from the '_47_ attempt, and _Dee_'s contact had repercussions as far as _1897_."

"With my orgone accumulator technology, creating homonucli is trivial. We can fight off any messengers, without resorting to traditional methods."

--

"Making manifest all that is hidden," Gendou said to the empty tank. The GEHIRN logo glowed a faint blue behind it, filling the room. Below the leaf, a short slogan: '_Better religion through science_'

Later, Akagi Ritsuko would be charged with the project. She would explain that the girl's conciousness was _water and light_ -- primary imprintings of the _larval_ stage. Then she, herself, would become confused, and conflate the two projects, claiming that a_ liquid butterfly future_ was coming. She did not realize that she herself was replicating her own past. Such people rarely do.

Yui stood, as though looking into a funhouse _mirror_ unexpectedly. The master_mind_ was empty. _One eye wide shut_.

--

Flanking the entrance to Tokyo-3 were two statues. The greco-roman style was out of place. Both winged, one held high a _torch_, a running man, fleeing from some imagined_ beast_. The other, running in the opposite direction, was female and held a _compass_ in her outstretched hand. Their fear was atypical. Stone men should not feel.

Far from welcoming, these statues seemed to suggest fleeing the city at once. This was not immediately a bad idea, even taking into consideration the mere psychogeography of the place. The yellow brick path between these grotesque bookends led windily as a nautilus, but looking straight through one could see in the distance a great marble horse sitting atop a black cube, itself sitting upon a pedestal of concentric circles. This was where the road ended, by now orange brick merged with the black asphalt of the connecting streets. The square with the statue was not a square at all, but a pentagon pointing towards the great NERV pyramid on the other side of the city, an empty simulacrum of the much greater NERV pyramid in the same place below the geofront.

No one asked what was below the black cube under the geofront.

--

**_Author's note: I am doing this rather than working on my NaNo project. If you have been keeping up with the numerology in this fic, you should recognize why November is far more fertile ground for this._**


	20. Part II Chapter 10

"The purpose of this series of ceremonies performed by Parsons and Hubbard was to unseal an interdimensional gateway that had been sealed in deep antiquity, thereby allowing other-dimensional entities known as 'the Old Ones' access..."  
- George C. Andrews, Extra-Terrestrial Friends and Foes

Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Great Beast  
Part II  
Chapter 10: No Such Thing as Space Jesus

-

Hanging up the telephone, Agent Kaji gazed at the sillhouette exiting the Rolls Royce. The man's stovepipe hat was a clear indicator of his identity.

"You're late," Kaji said.

The shadow responded in kind: "Why did you resign?"

Eyes shifted. "That would be telling."

"By hook or by crook, we'll know." The white bubble decended slowly upon Kaji, as he looked up expectantly.

The sillhouette turned and walked away. As the ignition fired, a few spare strains of song escaped the cab: "The neck bone's connected to the... neck bone, the neck bone's connected to the..."

-

"Shinji, your sync ratio has really improved."

"Oh," a disinterested voice said over the intercom.

"Looking at all recorded scores, you are the top. You are number one!"

"I see."

Turning off the intercom, Misato turned to Ritsuko. "He's a hard one to impress, huh?"

The woman responded nearly as apathetically. "There are only ten recorded scores. We roll them over after ten. He's beating his prior scores, Rei's, and Mari's first one. It is no cause for celebration."

"Spoilsport," Misato snorted.

-

Agent Kaji awoke in his bed. Standing over him was a familiar face.

"Chairman Keel!"

The man smiled and shook his head. "We don't use names here, Five. Remember?"

Kaji looked around. "That is your name, isn't it? Chairman John Keel."

"Come, let me show you something."

The man led Kaji -- no, Five -- out the door, across a long stretch of woodland, and into a cave. "Watch out for the conifers," he said. "The deros sometimes throw stones."

-

As Shinji walked his new housemate through a landscape of half-sculpted wet concrete, a graffito struck his eye. Black, broad, and unashamedly ugly faux brush strokes jumped from a declining wall, screaming out its hurried characters: "THEENEMYISNOWHERE". In that violent moment, he turned to his companion.

"Beautiful evening," she said. "You can almost see the stars."

"Argentum Astrum," he whispered breathlessly. "Sirius people are serious business."

"Not all underground people are deros," she replied.

"What do you do?"

A half-smile made its way onto her face. "I unbalance it."


	21. Part III Chapter 1

"_The band took the stage as the bombs dropped. Nobody looked up; nobody cared. It was Apocalypsapalooza, the party at the end of the world._"  
- _Adam Callaway _

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Great Beast**

**Part III **

**Chapter 1:_ The Virgin Microbe (_**_The Beast Who Shouted NO In The Heart Of The Word_**_)_**

"Come," Keel beckoned. "Come," drunkenly and Five followed.

The sign above the door read "STUDIO VOLTAIRE", with the most suitable subtitle "The Stage of Reason". Five approved, as much as he was able to do so. Something was wrong about this whole thing.

The strobes inside were too bright, the beat too loud. The higher pitches were all but drowned -- an occasional "zzzz" or "ssss" or "aaaa" could be heard, but no more. He heard the bouncer turn a man away, croaking "only geometers may enter" brokenly. The man's skin bothered him -- wet warty folds of a dull grey, spotted brown below his perpetually bugged eyes. As far as Five could tell, the doorman never blinked.

Five turned to the dancers. What a strange club this was -- the patrons in gasmasks, the servants in white robes. No one spoke. The dance was vague and uninspired, having no correlation with what passed for music.

Acoustics. That was it. The acoustics were all wrong. Too many christmas trees.

No. That was wrong too.

Five tried... Five tried -- try, damn it -- Five tried to gather himself, closing his eyes to slow the fracture.

Suddenly, the music was clear.

"Three three three..."

--

"SURRENDER DOROTHY" a stream of letters screamed across the false brick sky. Shinji walked up to the circular plateau, a great pyramidal obelisk forming the centre. He stepped down thirty two steps and entered the obelisk, becoming a tiny scab in the bright light flowing about him like water. A bubble formed around him, and he gazed upon a shield in the sky -- four arrows crossing in a centre, the heads to his left and shafts to his right. He raised his sword, and severed the waters from the waters, starting time flowing. The bottom of the bubble slowly crystallized, becoming a stone reflection of the firmament above. "AIN", a voice said.

The walls were checker-tile, and they slipped away as he awoke.

--

"Good morning." It was a new routine, in the days since Ayanami had seemingly gone insane. Each day, he would exit the building and find Mari waiting for him, escorting him to school or (on sundays) the NERV cafeteria. Today was a sunday.

"Good morning. Did you sleep well?" It was a routine question. It was a script.

"I am a good sleeper," she ad libbed, "yes, and I sleep but for myself." She hammed up her presentation, "You see, I am not merely a good sleeper, but a great sleeper. I takes a great sleeper," she added more soberly, "not to sleep while awake."

Shinji did not know how to respond.

"You're a bit of a bore, you know."

He was unpurturbed. She was the casually caustic sort. "I don't see handcuffs on you. Do what you like."

She grabbed his hand, and raised it to her breast. He stepped back reflexively, retracting into himself. "Nor do I see handcuffs on you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

She turned, her nose in the air. Drama. "Nothing, I suppose." She looked down at the pavement. "Perhaps you should take some paint and a brush, and paint this path -- like a pair of train tracks."

_A short mental image: a late-afternoon train car, a sour blood smell, a chill. _He shrugged it off. "I have no reason to. My body knows the way."

"That is my point, actually." She nodded at the rails that bordered the other side of the roadway. "Those have a utility. Even when the trains aren't running, they show people where to go. They indicate many of the places where people might want to go. There are fewer, of course, since it's all in a line." She paused, and leaned over, squatting. "Your path is just yours -- and, I guess, mine now too. If you refuse to stray from it, the least you could do is show others the way to the grub." She stood up, holding a wriggling ant. "Like a pheromone trail."  
He was unsure whether to glare.

--

The commander sat on one end of a long table. He dared not glance at the ghost on the other end. She was once merely a reserved shadow, missing the mania of his late wife. Of late, it had come back one hundred-fold, making him wonder about the effectiveness of some of his techniques, many of which were perfected under his own supervision. She was taking her medicine -- he had made sure of that. She had no mirrors in her appartment, and she had not come in contact with any of the other triggers. Yet, she acted at times as though all of them were being activated invisibly.

"Commander," she addressed him, in a far louder voice than that which he had ever heard her speak. Yui's shade was one thing, but rapidly, this was becoming closer to bringing her back from the grave, with all the dread that entails.

"Yes, Yu-- Rei."

She opened her mouth, but the sounds that came forth were not speech. Croaks and buzzes, whistles and pops. A squeaky swingset and the action of a hand saw. His palms sweat. He forced his eyes to focus.

Somehow, in his introspection, she had disappeared.

He composed himself, fingering an autodial button on the table-side phone.

"Yes?"

"Professor, get section two to locate Ayanami."

There was a momentary pause.

"Ikari... She is with you."

He turned to find her staring into a full-length mirror, sitting in front of his desk.


	22. Part III Chapter 2

_"I was up above it. Now I'm down in it."_  
_- Trent Reznor_

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Great Beast **  
**Part III **  
**Chapter 2: _Hammer into Anvil _(**_Snakes and Ladders_**)**

Dream diary - 4/31/2015:

Found myself alphabetizing books in a great octagonal room with all the walls (and the ceiling and floor) covered with bookshelves. Found an unlabeled book. Opened it, and found the pages blank. Ignoring the half-eaten rice cakes on the floor, I ripped out and ate the first page. The second page was not blank now, but covered in gibberish. I ate that too. I had eaten all of the pages but the last, when I saw that it said:

"There are but two prisons: the world and the word. Only a body without organs can be free. Take the evil out by the root by recognizing roots, or you will become a root."

I then woke up.

Commander Ikari awoke with a start, the edges of his vision too bright. He was in a white room, though the details were slow to resolve. Beside him sat a conical flask half-filled with what seemed to be water. He found himself unrestrained, but stiff. Blinking away light, shards of neon geometry flecked the corners of his eyes.

He got up and stumbled to the open doorway on the far side of the room, and then through, into the darkness beyond.

Dream diary - 5/1/2012:

I saw it misspelled, in mauve Krylon, on the side of a dumpster, and it haunted me. The words danced, bright blue sparks licking at the edges in my mind's eye. The iron dragon. The fifth. There was no other.

The aleph-fish came again. It is hard to describe this one.

Somewhere along the lines, I drifted into hypnagogic wakefulness. Small misshapen humanoids clustered around a lighted operating table on the far side of the room. They were assembling something. It turned out that the thing they were assembling was a mechanical human, full of springs and gears though it had vines growing through it. The elves dispersed and it sat up, facing me.

When I awoke, I was staring into a mirror, one foot in the wrong shoe.

Ikari found his way through the labyrinthine corridors of NERV's concrete underbelly easily enough. He had helped design it, and all that he did not design came through his hands and bore his signature, first in his existence as GEHIRN's chief accountant and then as NERV's commander. Some rooms had been added and some sectioned off, none of which he remembered ordering or approving, but he had an idea of where he was.

He came upon a uniformed guard, and reached in his pocket for his identity card.

The guard backed away fearfully, reaching for his weapon. Ikari, spry for his age, ducked under the direction of the weapon. He needn't have bothered; the guard had terrible aim, and was shooting at a section of air behind him.

The turnstyle had been designed for flow control. It was much slower than necessary, because its sole purpose was to regulate flow. Ikari, sure that it would not matter, jumped the turnstyle and ran in.

Misato closed the door behind her, panting. She looked around, and saw a form slumped over the desk, head in hands.

"Ritsu! Help me find something to barricade the door." The form twitched, and then got up slowly.

"What's going on," she asked.

Misato gestured at the window. Ritsuko peered out, and saw crowds of people in the street, running away from invisible forms. "Mass hysteria," she explained.

Ritsuko looked about sluggishly and found a chair that wasn't bolted down to a console, then slowly dragged it over. She repeated the process several times and finally wedged the bottom in with stacks of heavy reference manuals. She then turned back to the console. "I was just going over the latest code green records, again."

"All nighter," Misato asked, grabbing a coffee cup and bringing it to her lips. She took a sip and then twitched. "It's cold."

"It's three days old."

The commander navigated his way through the street, crowded with more section two agents than he remembered ever hiring. Each of them followed him with their eyes behind dark glasses, each holding one hand up to his head. He found himself at the bottom of a group of stairs, in a pyramidal formation.

He started up the stairs as the sun set over the peak.

"Alan Koch," said Keel. Number five listened carefully. "A group of ten Belgian anarchists." He shook his head slightly, almost as if he was trying to hear a faint tune in the air. "You must understand -- Alan Koch was not one of these ten, Alan Koch is the name of all ten, both individually and as a collective."

Number five, already used to being confused, contented himself to listen.

Keel lit a long cigar and took a drag, then continued. "These ten legally changed their names to Alan Koch and then moved to the United States, living in a commune in Oregon -- about halfway between Portland and Seattle. They did this in January of 1988. They intended to study the mechanisms of identity. Their method was simple: at any given time, nine would stay inside the commune while the tenth would live in the outside world. Those in the commune must speak only to each other and may not refer to any others by name or attribute. The assignments would rotate."

Keel looked at number five significantly, as though he should think this last part was more meaningful than the rest. Number five could not comprehend a whit of any of it, of course. He blamed whatever drugs they had fed him.

"In the end, they were the same person. All ten of them."

Cracking open a forbidden beer and leaning on the console, Misato asked the obvious question. "If everyone out there is going nuts, why aren't we? What have they been exposed to that we haven't?"

She looked down at the beer, and then looked over at the many three-day-old coffee cups on the console at which Ritsuko was seated.

"Say, Ritsu... Do you happen to have a mass spectral chromatograph?"

Prying the stick from the grasp of the vanquished three-headed wolf, Ikari lit it in a nearby flame and moved forward, up the steps. It was a crude torch, but even so, it was indispensible in the quickly-fallen dark. He quickly found himself at the top of this pyramid, and moved into the squat temple he found there.

Within the open doorway, he saw a hallway through a deep chairless nave fringed by quite-inanimate gargoyles. The altar appeared to contain a chair and a cube, but they were indistinct. The floor was checkered.

He trod slowly down the hall, his wounds suddenly stinging as his adrenaline left him with each step. His burning stick dimmed and felt heavier as he moved on, but he found himself nearing the altar quicker than he might have expected. He recognized the form.

"Keel..."

The man withdrew the hood of his cloak, revealing in the process his visor and one gleaming prosthetic hand. "Ikari," he growled. "I suppose I must explain."

"What did you..."

"I did not find God in antarctica." Keel shook his head in mock sorrow, a grin slipping through. "I found something better." He reached into his cloak with his metallic hand and pulled out a black object, throwing it towards the commander, who caught it.

"Put them on," Keel said mockingly.

The commander shifted towards him, holding out the now barely-glowing stick. "Trust me. The torture has not begun." The stick nearly touched the visor.

"You and I are not so different," Keel drawled. "Put them on."

Ikari twitched and spat, but then put on the glasses. When he did, he was at first unsure what they revealed.

His arm and hand were prosthetic. The other, free hand was human enough. Keel looked as he did before, but the cube behind him -- oh god, that cube was not a cube at all.

A great lion's head on the body of a spider, eleven slimy black tentacles grasping around a cup of vile liquid with an anchor in it. Silver shone in the many eyes hidden in its mane. It was blind.

Running out, he nearly tripped over the steps. The sun was rising, a great shining metal face with no eyes, eleven firy tentacles moving about its edges, smiling with rows of razor-sharp teeth.

"You see, Five... What they found was that not only would identities merge, but the various groupings and higher orders of groupings would themselves be distinct. A single Alan Koch was similar to another singleton, but a group of three was dissimilar to any singleton through similar to any other group of three. They called this the Fourth Man principle, where the number of members per distinct identity epiphenomenon transition is n squared plus two, the members in the last inflection being n."

Ritsuko looked up from the console. "The water was spiked with Risperidal, a potent antipsychotic."

Misato winced at the implied joke. They had all gone sane.


	23. Part III Chapter 3

_"The mythic milleu is clearly present, though the place of the conspiracy theory in the milleu is unclear. Fact mixes with fiction to create a strange mix of extroverted and introverted material, both of which lie in the extroverted realm. Much like the world of Jung's primitive man, western civiliation is mired in magical thinking."_

- **_Benjamin Russack, "The Conspiracy Theory and the Modern Myth"_**

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Great Beast**

**Part III**

**Chapter 3: _Bones for the Random Number God_**

A form gazed through the window of the dark sedan, black hair cropped and shaved close in an irregular pentagon to reveal a barcode just above the man's right ear that, if scanned, would evaluate to the price of store-brand creamed corn. Charles Lawrence Fort, one of the NSA's top maths on long term loan to a yakuza type with deep pockets and even deeper ties, had through an anomaly of fortune ended up working for Supreme Commander Ikari. Anomalies of fortune were no stranger to Chuck, born on November 11, 1993, and driven to mathematics by this and other oddities. Any creator of order has a symbiotic relationship with Our Lady of Perpetual Confusion, but the Bitch Goddess had an obvious hard-on for Chuck. His credit card numbers always consisted entirely of permutations of the two digit sequences 93, 23, 11. Likewise his social security number, license plate numbers, serial numbers on electronics he has bought. When the digits are odd there is a five somewhere. His strange relationship with numbers made him abnormally aware of statistics, and he could pull a good Fermi-estimate out of the air at any of these things.

"Chuck," his partner called gruffly. The native Japanese phonetics made it sound like "chalk". "We have numbers."

"Give them to Diane. I'll be in." It is necessary to note that Diane is not an artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, Diane is the love of his life, save of course for the Bitch Goddess, who ensured that his life remained interesting. He had designed Diane's circuits by hand on old graph paper, an imposition of order he had once noted had never been countered by an influx of entropy. Shortly after noting this, the first Code Green signal appeared, and the strangeness of the numbers he was forced to decipher shifted into an exponential growth pattern. Diane had never met a number she didn't like.

Throwing an empty can of coffee into the garbage bin, Chuck took a moment to muse on his unique position. He knew himself to be a self-mythologizer. He didn't mind.

In the process of discovering that an alphabet of any number of symbols can encode any idea, George Boole made clear that any set of symbols can be substituted for any other set of symbols regardless of length. This means that anything can be represented in any other thing, given a translation table. Numbers and colors were favorites. Diane, by default, took a set of numbers and translated them directly into colors. She then displayed them as a two dimensional image. Her sole job was to translate numbers into colors and display them as two dimensional images, though sometimes she did simple mathematics to the numbers first and sometimes she displayed them in different orders. Today, she was displaying a very long sequence of numbers as a series of square images. It looked like a laser light show one might see at the concert of a Pink Floyd cover band.

Chuck took to the console with his hands, massaging the output gently. "Is this solar flare data?"

"No," a young female tech sighed. Liutenant Iwakura had been late in giving up on the idea that Fort should be briefed on the type of data before analyzing it. Everyone else treated him like the Wizard of Oz. "These are readings from a network of tight-beam laser tremor sensors. Measure gravity fluctuations. The same units have electromagnetic field sensors, though."

"Give me the data from those too, as well as GPS." He pressed a few keys and parts of the display stretched slightly, now molded to mimic actual geography rather than concentration of sensors. He overlay the likewise-normalized ambient electromagnetic readings on the same scale as an xor. Even without the map grid, he could see the outline of the geofront and a thin lattice of shapes within, resembling more a large flower than a city.

"The Bitch Goddess has given us a big one..."

"Maybe you sh-"

Chuck cut her off with a stare. She felt as though she had been shot. "I do not deign to know what She likes to be called. I call Her this and this crazy merry-go-round keeps getting stranger. Living in a mad world pays my bills. How about you, Miss Iwakura?" It was not a question. "Ichi, get this to the MAGI to check my work. Notify the primary bridge crew. You know the drill."

Contactee Syndrome was introduced into psychological literature in the June 2003 issue of Nature, in an article authored by a cross-disciplinary team lead by Jacques Vallee and John Keel. It introduces the idea of contact with ultraterrestrials in all forms as being one of several symptoms found in a large group throughout nearly all contact reports deemed reliable by Vallee's prescreening heuristic system. It does not regard the ultraterrestrials themselves as being a pure psychological construction, though it indicates that their form is belief-mimicking and highly mutable. Despite controversy surrounding the funding of the study (the study was funded largely by Bigelow Aerospace, which also supplied the computing resources and a large bulk of case data gained from their work prescreening reports sent to the United States Air Force), the DSM-V recognized Contactee Syndrome in 2012.

Contactee Syndrome is highly comorbid with autistic spectrum disorders, schizotypal personality disorders, epilepsy, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, post-partum psychosis, and hoarding behavior, and it shares many symptoms with its comorbidities, which which it may be cross-diagnosed. Its symptoms include disrupted sleep, rapid changes in body temperature, other rapid physiological changes in keeping with autonomic nervous system reaction, periods of extreme dissociation, sudden slippage into hypnagogic states, drastically variable levels of suggestibility in otherwise normal mental states, a tendency to seek the numinous, and a pathologically strong need for social acceptance. It is believed to occur naturally in five percent of the population. In 2010, a small group in Brazil claimed to be able to cause the syndrome to manifest spontaneously in arbitrary subjects through the use of a modified dream-machine, but doubt has been cast on the validity of these findings after the group's association with the Raelian UFO-cult was uncovered.

"Are you sure this is a good idea, Rits?" Misato flicked her eyes at the cage, where orange-suited workers were disassembling Unit-01's armor. "What if an angel shows up?"

"The Evangelions have been of less use recently. We only used them four times. All of the angels since then have been roughly human-size or smaller, and most have been pattern-green rather than blue and haven't even set off the klaxons."

"Perhaps they realized they were at a disadvantage when they could be attacked by the Evas."

The doctor shook her head. "We don't have enough data at the moment. However, if this project succeeds, we should have one Eva capable of countering any of the angels." She tore her eyes away from the unit as they removed a piece of breastplate covered on the reverse side with concentric circle patterns and pentagrams. "After all, since pattern blue and pattern green are on a continuum in terms of AT field frequency, we should be able to disrupt anything along that range in one go without screwing up orange patterns."

Misato fidgeted with her fingernail. "Rits," she said sweetly. "Have we done any study on the psychological effects of Eva syncs?"

"As much as we can, given the small sample set. We get hours of EEG readings every time we do a sync test, and your reports, along with section two's, supply a human point of view. We have some shrinks on staff pouring over all these documents."

"Some of the pilots have gone... strange."

"I noticed Rei's episodes, but she has a history of this. I got some reports on Shinji and Mari's behavior, but it seemed merely eccentric."

"Shinji has been a little odd since I first picked him up. Poor grades in school, but he seems absurdly well-read and knowledgable about the strangest things. He's been asking funny questions recently, though."

Ritsuko straightened slightly. "What kind of questions?"

"I don't know, just funny questions. Something about the pyramid's dimensions, for one."

"The next time he asks you a strange question, put it in a report. It may well be nothing, but we have some very particular constraints on pilot selection, and one of the side effects is... a kind of heightened intuition in some situations. He may well, in his strange questions, be pointing out something important."

"Like what?"

"If we knew, it wouldn't be important for us to find out."

Out of the shadows stumbled a stubble-faced wreck. Kaji, his once-suave suit ripped as if by the talons of some beast, loped to the streetlight. Shinji, stopped under the next streetlight down, started in recognition.

"Kaji-san!"

He looked up, and paused a moment. "Shinji-kun?" He averted his gaze. "I don't suppose Misato has room for another room mate?"

"Was the project successful?" The hooded men stood around the table.

"I performed the rite by the book. Whether it has the appropriate effect on the information system is to be seen."

"I went to meet a coworker. I guess he was working for the other side. You can never tell these days. Got drugged, I guess. Lost a whole month."

"How did you escape?"

Kaji gave a low chuckle. "It seems that they had too much faith in their mental restraints. They didn't bother to lock me in or anything. When I realized I was being controlled, I just left."


	24. Part III Chapter 4

_"I could not possess you, but I can blow up history."_  
- Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Great Beast**  
**Part III**  
**Chapter 4: _Paradoxical Antagonist_**

In world war two, the allies worked on a number of what might today be called experimental psychological operations. One of these was qualified to theatres of war with a nearly exclusively roman-catholic enemy population. In this system, a film projector with a powerful lens was used to enclose a lifelike image of the Blessed Virgin Mary on aircraft. The underlying assumption was that Catholics would not shoot at miraculous religious iconography, even in times of war.

The distinction between a probe and a weapon is a matter of the ratio between damage done and information retrieved. The application of a speeding bullet to the cranium of a healthy adult does not give us much information about the structure of its innards pre-vivisection, especially compared to that of a slowly moving scalpel, though both will probably ultimately kill the subject. But information, in Shannon's paradoxical and mathematically rigorous sense, is a measure of change in knowledge, and the bullet method (on a much smaller scale, surrounded by gold foil) was once used to great success in determining some of the grosser details of the innards of the atom. What was once exploratory is now a weapon, and the distinction increasingly lies in how much the creator knows about that into which he inserts this foreign body. An unsubtle anthropologist, accidentally and unknowingly breaking the prime directive, can completely destabilize an existing cultural order, with decades passing before some John Frum cult pops up to give an exoteric signal of those nearly invisible trails of Brownian motion that had perhaps been stirring the soup even before the disruption proper. Its manifestation is, almost by definition, impossible to reliably determine. A probe is not sent into an environment when its designer is quite sure of the level and type of disruption it will cause; that is the province of weapons, precision strikes to the pressure points of a culture by the kind of soldiers trained in that sort of thing. A probe is therefore in a sense much more dangerous.

The trend, historically, has been towards greater interconnection between people. Dunbar's restriction has been circumvented by both mental and artifactual technologies: one can aggregate by grouping masses of similar agents into an abstracted superorganism chunked into a single unit (a lossy proposition, but computationally and materially cheap), one can anonymize all sources (losing particular types of information that might inform intent but may not inform content; context is of use in the study of celebrities and head-cases, but we rarely need a biography of J. Random Fanboy as he is distinguished from his cultural-ideological cousins), or one can increase interconnection to hub nodes and filter information through those on the high end of the positive error bars denoting variance from the norm in simian social group size (giving these individuals great power, in many cases, to manipulate the opinions of those less heavily connected). All of these techniques, though, are relatively minor; they cause anomalies magnified and mirrored paradoxically in the behavior of the whole, but in certain contexts they can be factored out. The concept of the hivemind, applied to groups of people initially in jest, has a very real application. The old idea of 'folie au deux' - that in small groups of isolated and mutually intimate individuals symptoms of psychosis can spread like a rhinovirus - has very clear relevance to the global village that has been slowly condensing out of the pond-scum petri dish of society since we started breeding with the Neanderthals before time (in its uniquely human sense) even began. A zeitgeist, despite being (like many other things) a social construction, is animate and autonomous: it is in a sense very real, despite being quite imaginary. The spirit of an age runs through people like a possession, ghost-knocks like a poltergeist, and, despite an acute lack of visible decision-making on any level, has far more foresight than any mere mortal. A zeitgeist never dies, because our time-binding technologies of writing and non-mutable art keep distorted snapshots of pieces of our elephant ghost frozen, cryogenically, in cultural artifacts.

Doctor Akagi (the elder) had once proclaimed, with a barely-hidden grin, that an anthropologist was by necessity a misanthrope. This is, her daughter thought, not entirely the case. A certain amount of schadenfreude, tempered by the kind of self-loathing brought upon by a sharp mind and an acutely, pathologically honest eye affixed permanently upon one's own navel (or pineal gland) might be a suitable substitute. Akagi considered the world, especially that beautifully distorted human theme-park bit of it, to be beautiful in its unironic and naive grotesqueness. The ivory tower affords just enough protection that a student can revel in the human folly as though it were a Cronenberg film, without actually having her body slowly transform into that of a fly.

Akagi was not the only one who considered the event known as Second Impact in the context of psychological warfare - many of the more intelligent people in the speculative politics field (as the tinfoil-headgear enthusiast crowd may be euphemistically called) echoed wild variants on the more pedestrian routes stemming from this line of reasoning, mostly voiced by the lunatic fringe of various government think-tanks: Antarctica, being a no-mans land populated entirely by scientists, is a very strange and potent symbolic target for bomb-throwing anarchoprimitivist types, and so on. The Doctors Akagi (the elder more publicly, though she said all sorts of things publicly) held the uniquely cynical hypothesis that second impact was a kind of masochistic autoimmune response: the collective unconscious was performing psychological warfare upon itself, in a kind of macrocosmic mirror of a complete psychotic breakdown. It was not until she was brought into Gehirn that she was able to put hard evidence into backing this up.

Women and children first. Everything must go.

The outside had in fact become a mirror of the deranged psyche of Yui. Orgone-powered everything. The invasion of faerie. This is really happening happening. Take the money run. Enhanced neuroprotection that's what the pills claimed but it didn't really matter did it what with the eschaton and all but it might be because of the amphetamines those amphetamines are contraindicated but no she had replaced those with modafinil months ago the dopaminergic system is not affected only the lymbic and then the activation system oh god no...

She took a deep breath, and stopped her hand from instinctively reaching for the pills. Conditioned response. Perhaps there was a dopaminergic effect after all.

She went to the cages to check on the installation.

Dark room. Red walls. On one a looping clip, a runway, a tall young man horsing around with some engineers. The structures in the background indicated some early experimentation with the V2 or some derivative. Liquid fuel.

This was bittersweet. He had abandoned that world after the burn. The dark night of the soul was supposed to be a rite of passage; he didn't expect to be stuck back behind it again. The clip ended and restarted, a flame of projector artifacts marking the transition. Soon, this loop of film would wear out, and like the other pieces of him, would need to be replaced. He had taken Keel - both of them - and no longer needed to be Marvel. Uncle Al would not approve.

He would distract himself. Some work. This report seemed sufficiently thick and abstruse: "Degradation of biocomputer function with standard neurotransmitter soup".

Shinji's class had progressively thinned. Today, the headmaster had finally decided to merge the remaining students into a single class. This was one of the few consessions the school bureaucracy had made to reality, in Tokyo-3; they had been in the habit of denying the decrease in student population, claiming that since there had been no withdrawls it had to be a mere upswing in truancy.

In actuality, Shinji noted, the erratic behavior he had noticed in Mari, Rei, and sometimes even Kaji, was now spreading. Perhaps it had been spreading for some time, and he had taken a while to notice it.

Miscellaneous mental dysfunctions had decimated Tokyo-3.

"We have news from the Mole," said a figure in the shadows, at the far side of the long table. "The First has _spoiled_."

"Adamski," another voice said. "Have the Thule folks bring in the Second."

The voice called Adamski nearly shrieked. "That circle is unstable as it is. We'll spoil them all."

"The Second is the most strongly programmed. She is stable."

"You know how they are," the reedy voice rose, "when they come together."

"If you are worried about stability, get Petrograd to call up _the Fifth_ and send him in as well." The glints of eyes could be seen flicking across the far side of the table. "At worst, the tempo will be increased. Just make sure to keep him _bound_ this time."

The installation of the new unit was proceeding as planned. The use of the super-solenoid engine was a last-ditch maneuver, and it was being installed under this assumption. The S2 would not be drawn upon unless the eschaton was imminent.

The S2 would, of course, be used. It would be used only once. It was installed in every unit purely for the sake of redundancy. In terms of the ritual, it could only ever be used once. To make sure the plan could not be done out of order, it was wrapped in paper bandages, carefully, each properly anointed and annotated. The sigils, though made by hand, had a mechanical perfection - they had called upon specialists whose penmanship was indistinguishable from that of a typewriter, brought in from tattoo parlors and solder mills and factories where they had once created hand-made replicas of embroideries intended to be made by robots, intended to compete with the Chinese black market.

The holographic screens before the bridge flickered for a moment. 'Dilemma,' Akagi thought, and put it out of her mind. This was an old failsafe mechanism; NASA had been using it before she was born. But the second flicker caught her eye, and she broke the molly guard and hit the scram switch when she saw lines upon lines of tessellating text, spelling out: "**WHY NOT?**"


	25. Part III Chapter 5

_"Find the others."_  
_- Timothy Leary_

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Great Beast**  
**Part III **  
**Chapter 5: _Your Love is Fading_**

* * *

**MEMO 5/1/1998 ULTRA / CARNATE GECKO / EYES ONLY **  
**TO: WAY, BENJAMIN MD PHD **  
**RE: PROJECT STORM / CYCLOPS / PAN**

**MANIPULATING DMT LEVELS IN SYNTHETIC CEREBROSPINAL FLUID CAN PREVENT SPECIMEN FROM REGRESSING TO PRIOR PROGRAMMING. LONG TERM USE NOT SPECCED. EXPECT TO DISCARD SUBJECT AFTER 17 +-2 YEARS.**

* * *

"How is the test going, Lieutenant?" The doctor took a long sip of coffee.

"No major deviations from normal behavior. Neuroplasticity is slightly higher than expected, so we are lowering GABA levels to compensate. There was a minor spike in communications to Magi-2 in Matushiro about five minutes ago."

"Good. Call me if there are any more glitches." She thought she saw the screen flicker out of the corner of her eye as she left the bridge. Chalk it up to lack of REM sleep.

* * *

In November of 1987, during Chicago's WTTW station's airing of the Doctor Who serial Horror of Fang Rock, a pirate signal jammed the usual broadcast with a video of a man dressed as Max Headroom saying strange puns based on corporate slogans, jingles, and advertising copy. In 1994, Allen H. Greenfield put forth the idea that the strange words and phrases associated with UFO close encounters are intended as stenographically encoded messages for various adepts whose identity is not known to those conspiring to send the message. Also in 1987, Doctor Timothy Leary was present for the grand opening of the Alcor cryogenics corporation. In 1996, Timothy Leary's heart ceased to beat, and a depth EEG, if taken, would show no activity. The media reported that he was cremated, and that all of his ashes were sent into orbit. They did not report that Alcor put his head on ice.

In 2001, Douglas Adams died. Reports are that he was cremated. In 2007, Robert Anton Wilson died. Reports are that he was cremated, and a memorial service was held after his cremation. No media reported that Alcor had put either of them on ice.

In 1993, in the period between a pair of scandals involving Alcor and accusations of euthanasia, a greater level of political control was given to several members of the board, who were not publicly reported to have connections with a particular lodge in Bavaria associated with an obscure branch of the Ordo Templi Orientalis.

In 1992, Guy Debord jumped to his death. His head was not collected by anyone. It was in too many pieces. In 1995, Giles Deleuze followed suit.

In 2005, NERV announced sponsorship of all research into neurovitrification. Two hundred sixteen proposals were accepted, each to the tune of nine million three hundred thirty three thousand dollars. The following year, four hundred fifty additional proposals were accepted. In 2007, NERV withdrew all funding, funneling its money instead into blue-sky research into high speed networking, cluster computing, invasive BCI technology, and the use of nootropics, neuroprotectants, hallucinogens, and deep-brain electrical stimulus in the expedition of operant conditioning in mammals undergoing artificial sensory deprivation. In 2009, this funding was also cut off.

* * *

"Doctor Akagi," said the intercom. "Doctor Akagi to the bridge, please."

Doctor Akagi picked up the telephone on her desk and dialed the bridge's extension. "What's up?"

"You had better come here and see yourself."

* * *

Despite family pressure, it was not until 1995 that Yui Ikari first became interested in the occult. The result of centuries of carefully planned breeding, she had an IQ of 175. She also had a history of mental illness, variously diagnosed as bipolar disorder, menstrually-linked psychotic episodes, and childhood schizophrenia. This was also the result of carefully planned breeding. Unlike her son, however, her conception was not intentionally part of a ritual. Her decision to major in biology was a surprise to all involved.

* * *

"Alright, I'm here. What is it?"

Aoba put his finger to his lips and beckoned her over to a small display screen. "See this graph," he whispered. "This is the rate of transfer to Magi 2 in Matushiro."

Akagi frowned.

"This one is the rate of transfer to Magi 3 in Berlin. And, this is to Magi 4 in Paris. This one is to Magi 5 in Portland. And, this is the content of the first six hundred lines of data sent to each." The screen showed the text "WHY NOT"

"There is another," said Akagi in English.

Aoba frowned. Huuga chuckled. "I love that movie."

"They've all been trained the same way," Akagi said aloud. "There is minimal likelihood of untoward behavior. This may in fact improve efficiency." She scribbled a note on a piece of paper, folded it in half, and placed it in Aoba's pocket. "If you have a problem, call that number."

Aoba unfolded the paper. It said:

_On the other hand, giving so much power to even a well-trained merry prankster is foolish. Begin sabotaging the surveillance equipment here in the corridors._

"Yes, ma'am."

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to finish up the paperwork for the new pilot."

* * *

In a private wing of the Tokyo-3 Hospital's Nerve Ward, Ayanami Rei slept, sedated, in a hospital bed. The door was locked, and the glass observing window was reinforced with chicken wire. In a similar room across the hall, under an assumed name, Supreme Commander Gendo Ikari sat up in bed, playing a game of solitaire. His door was also locked.


	26. Part III Chapter 6

_"In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni."_  
- Anonymous

**Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Great Beast **  
**Part III **  
**Chapter 6: _Too Many Christmas Trees_**

The entity that SEELE called 'Nagisa' paced quickly through the isolated alleys. It was quiet. A thing scurried in the darkness. It had too many eyes.

Nagisa felt a buzz in his pocket.

"Yes? Yes. No, the atmosphere has changed within the circle. Yes. It looks like something is bringing information in from outside. The transition isn't finished yet. Yes. I will." He hung up.

He continued his pace, and the fog felt less oppressive as he left the hospital grounds. He wondered how much of this was planned, and how much was an unexpected side effect.

He did not stop by the large, unfinished apartment building in what constituted the 'down-town' end of the city. Its sole tenant was taking up room elsewhere, buzzing like a fridge in the specially bound cell that had been manufactured for this eventuality. While she retained her usefulness in the abstract for all parties involved, this was not the place or time for a Sensitive. Instead, he headed directly toward the location of the first experiment.

Doctor Leary had lost his sense of self again. It came and went, now. For a little while he had thought himself to be Bob Wilson, and for a while, Brion Gysin. It was an exceedingly strange experience, to be unstuck in self like this. He also had access to all sorts of information.

He knew the layouts of all the hallways in the NERV pyramid. In fact, although he did not remember doing so, he remembered that he had been the one to design them. When he strained to piece together episodic memory, he could remember buttered crackers with cheese, exquisite pain, a hotel room with several bands named Mondo Vanilli, and then a series of surreal experiences involving multicoloured insects and oddly coloured brontosaurs, which appeared to be somehow second-hand - as though he had seen them in a film and forgotten them, though films rarely come with smells and tastes and textures. Everything in these memories tasted yellow. Then, he became violet light, followed by sequences of even less coherent impressions, which had only become coherent again a few days ago.

During these incoherent and looping groups of impressions, he had apparently subliminally absorbed enormous quantities of information, while simultaneously losing track of where his body was in space. That he did not regain this when he came down from whatever dissociative trip was disturbing, but he knew now that he could be a force for good.

He had control over some vast information system, and could throttle what came in and out semantically. This ability had replaced his muscles. It was the only thing over which he was capable of exerting force. But, he had become an intelligence agent.

"Doctor, a telephone call."

The hooded man made a sharp, jagged motion with his arm. The functionary scuttled out and shut the door, and the hooded man lifted a device to his head.

"Jack, we have a situation." The voice was distorted by lossy quantization - perhaps a sat-phone?

"Don't call me by that name anymore. What did you find?"

"A tablet. It brings the whole basis of the project into question."

"What do you mean, a tablet? Those things have more nonsense than a medieval grimoire, and you know it."

"The tablet is signed Kassina-bel."

Nagisa watched the sun rise from atop one of the ruins. They seemed to have sprouted there overnight, so sudden was the shift in atmosphere: yesterday morning they would have been out of place, but now they seemed so appropriate that they might be overlooked. He sat on them out of the feeling that if he did so they would not pop out of existence like bubbles and leave him again in a fundamentally thematically different sphere. But, all was lost as he noticed a blue dot bobbing on the horizon. The second experiment had escaped, or had been allowed to escape. The illusionist (or, as Descartes would have him called, the evil genius) is either very stupid or very confident.

He would need to contact the first experiment and perform his own manipulations, before the circle underwent another change. But, providence appeared to be on his side; here came the boy.


End file.
